w^ 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES 


REV,  JOHN  MYLES 


AND  THE 


FOUNDING  OF 

THE  FIRST  BAPTIST  CHURCH 

IN  MASSACHUSETTS 


AN  HISTORICAL  ADDRESS 

Delivered  at  the  Dedication  of  a  Monument 

IN  Barrington,  Rhode  Island 

(Formerly  Swansea,  Mass.) 

June  17,  1905 


BY 

HENRY  MELVILLE  KING 
pastor  of  the  first  baptist  church  in  providence 


PROVIDENCE,  R.  I. 

PRESTON  &  ROUNDS  CO. 


13'X  L  H 


Copyright,  1905 

BY 
HENRY  M.  KING 


L        C  %-  C      C 


PREFACE. 

Rev.  John  Myles  came  to  New  England 
from  Swansea,  Wales,  in  1663,  being  driven 
from  his  native  land  by  religious  persecution 
in  the  reign  of  Charles  11.  He  settled  in 
Rehoboth,  Mass.,  and  subsequently  removed 
to  that  part  of  Sowams  known  as  Wannamoi- 
sett,  to  which  was  given  the  name  of  Swan- 
sea, in  remembrance  of  the  Welsh  town  from 
which  Mr.  Myles  came.  In  the  old  world  he 
had  been  a  successful  preacher  and  leader  of 
men,  and  in  the  new  world  such  were  his 
character  and  influence  that  he  is  worthy  to 
be  regarded  as  one  of  the  founders  of  our 
free  Republic,  though  his  name  does  not  al- 
ways appear  in  the  Encyclopaedias.  He 
founded  the  first  Baptist  church  on  Massachu- 
setts soil,  and  founded  a  town  the  most  unique 
in  some  respects  of  any  of  the  New  England 
settlements.  He  died  in  1683,  and  after  the 
lapse  of  222  years  there  was  no  stone  to  mark 
his  grave.    Indeed  the  place  of  his  burial  was 


M129677 


VI  PREFACE. 

not  positively  known,  though  he  "was  most 
probably  buried  in  the  old  graveyard  near 
where  his  meeting  house  and  dwelling  house 
stood  at  Tyler's  Point"  (Tustin)  in  the  pres- 
ent town  of  Barrington,  R.  I. 

Through  the  efforts  of  Hon.  Thomas  W. 
Bicknell,  President  of  the  Barrington  His- 
toric Antiquarian  Society  and  of  the  Bristol 
County  Historical  Association,  a  rough  boul- 
der was  procured  and  placed  in  the  old  ceme- 
tery near  the  supposed  place  of  the  grave, 
and  dedicated  to  Mr.  Myles'  memory  on  June 
17,  1905.  Appropriate  services  were  held  first 
in  the  Town  Hall  in  Barrington,  and  then  in 
the  cemetery,  both  being  presided  over  by  Mr. 
Bicknell.  The  services  in  the  Hall  consisted 
of  a  brief  address  by  the  President,  prayer  by 
Rev.  G.  E.  Morse,  minister  of  the  John  Myles 
Baptist  church  in  North  Swansea,  Mass.,  the 
Historical  Address  by  Rev.  Henry  M.  King, 
D.  D.,  minister  of  the  First  Baptist  church  in 
Providence,  a  brief  address  by  Rev.  H.  W. 
Wat j  en,  minister  of  the  Baptist  church  in 
Warren,  R.  L,  a  poem  by  Rev.  M.  L.  Willis- 
ton,  minister  of  the  Congregational  church  in 


PREFACE.  VU 

Barrington,  and  appropriate  musical  selections 
by  a  chorus  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  F. 
S.  Martin  of  Warren.  These  included  the 
singing  of  the  "Swansea  Song,"  written  by 
Hezekiah  Butterworth.     (See  appendix  J.) 

The  services  at  the  Cemetery  consisted  of 
a  Dedicatory  Address  by  Rev.  W.  H.  Eaton, 
D.  D.,  Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Baptist 
Missionary  Society  (see  appendix  J),  a  poem 
written  by  Miss  Imogene  C.  Eaton  of  East 
Providence  and  addresses  by  Mr.  Hezekiah 
Butterworth  of  Boston  and  by  ex-Governor 
John  W.  Davis  of  Pawtucket,  R.  I.,  both  of 
them  descendants  of  the  first  settlers.  Gen. 
Nelson  A.  Miles,  a  lineal  descendant  of  Rev. 
John  Myles,  was  expected  to  be  present,  but 
was  compelled  to  send  a  letter  of  regret.  The 
day  was  beautiful,  the  attendance ,  from  Bar- 
rington, Providence  and  adjacent  towns  large, 
and  the  services  of  great  interest  throughout. 

H.  M.  K. 
First  Baptist  Parsonage, 
December,  1905. 


CONTENTS. 

Historical  Address 1-51 

Appendix  A.     Covenant  of  the  Church.  52 

Appendix  B.     Grant  of  New  Swansea. .  56 

Appendix  C.     Reply  of  the  Church ....  58 

Appendix  D.     Action  of  the  Town 64 

Appendix  E.     Division   of    the    Inhabi- 
tants    (fj 

Appendix  F.     Letter  from  Thomas  Hol- 

lis ^2 

Appendix  G.     Weymouth  and  Hanserd 

Knollys    'J'J 

Appendix  H.     New  Churches  and  Early 

Pastors    81 

Appendix  I.     Was  the  Church  a  Baptist 

Church?    85 

Appendix  J.     Swansea  Song  and  Dedi- 
catory Address 93 

Appendix  K.     Bibliography 99 

Index 105 


)  ) 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES 

AND  THE 

FOUNDING  OF  THE  FIRST  BAPTIST 
CHURCH  IN  MASSACHUSETTS. 

By  a  remarkable  reaction  in  public  senti- 
ment the  English  people  who  had  beheaded 
Charles  I  on  the  afternoon  of  January  30, 
1649,  being  unable  to  endure  longer  his  op- 
pressive and  tyrannical  unsurpation  of  power, 
were  ready  almost  with  one  consent,  when 
Cromwell  died,  to  re-establish  the  throne  and 
welcome  a  king.  For  nearly  ten  years  they 
had  enjoyed  under  the  Protectorate  an  un- 
usual measure  of  liberty  and  religious  toler- 
ation. 

It  is  true  that  the  government  of  the  Great 
Commoner  was  never  wholly  acceptable  to  the 
people,  and  became,  as  it  progressed,  increas- 
ingly unpopular.  The  people  became  more 
and  more  dissatisfied,  and  hoped  to  find  sta- 
bility and  rest  by  a  return  to  royalty  and  the 


2  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

reinstatement  of  the  Stuart  line,  under  which 
they  were  encouraged  to  beHeve  they  might 
preserve  the  Hberties  which  they  had  enjoyed 
for  a  brief  time. 

It  has  been  truly  said  by  a  recent  student  of 
the  period:  "Cromwell  did  not  himself  hold 
the  highest  conceptions  on  the  subject  (of  re- 
ligious liberty),  but  he  put  in  practice  the 
views  he  did  hold.  By  him  the  leading  sects 
were  all  tolerated.  The  nation  was  ready  for 
no  such  freedom,  but  the  people  were  forced 
to  concede  each  other's  rights.  The  English 
government  was  as  little  representative  as  at 
any  period  in  his  history.  Yet  this  short  speci- 
men of  limited  toleration  (for  such  it  was)  led 
many  men  to  see  its  desirability.  The  nation 
went  back  heartily  to  the  domination  of  over- 
bearing kings,  but  never  quite  forgot  the  days 
of  Cromwellian  freedom."* 

It  is  the  old  and  oft  repeated  story  of  hu- 
man history,  the  people  longing  for  "the  leeks 
and  the  onions  and  the  garlic"  of  a  bondage 
from  which  they  had  escaped,  and  needing  the 


*Wallace  St.  John— "The  Contest  for  liberty  of  Con- 
science in  Eng-land,"  p.  82. 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  3 

painful  discipline  of  forty  years  of  wandering 
in  the  wilderness  before  they  were  ready  to 
enter  the  land  of  promise.  The  leaders  of 
the  Reformation,  Luther,  Zwingli,  Melanch- 
thon,  shrank  back  from  the  full  emancipation, 
of  which  at  first  they  fondly  dreamed,  and 
though  accomplishing  much,  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  satisfied  with  half  a  victory.  Our 
Puritan  fathers,  heroic  men,  fled  into  exile 
that  they  might  enjoy  personal  freedom,  at  the 
same  time  putting  straight  jackets  on  some 
of  their  own  number,  and  driving  into  a  new 
exile  those  who  came  to  help  them  on  to  a 
full  and  glorious  liberty.  The  great  founders 
of  our  Republic,  boldly  declaring  their  sublime 
faith  that  all  men  "are  created  equal,  that 
they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  cer- 
tain unalienable  rights,  that  among  these  are 
life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  that 
to  secure  these  rights  governments  are  estab- 
lished among  men,  deriving  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  a  declara- 
tion of  principles  unsurpassed  since  the  ut- 
terance of  the  immortal  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
yet  allowed  to  remain,  like  a  festering  sore  in 


4  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

the  body  politic,  a  system  of  human  slavery 
unnatural,  utterly  inconsistent  with  their  dec- 
laration of  principles,  and  more  cruel  than 
that  which  the  ancient  Hebrews  either  prac- 
ticed or  endured,  and  whose  abscission  came 
near  exhausting  the  wealth  and  the  life-blood 
of  the  nation.  So  inconsistent  is  the  life  of 
men  and  of  nations;  so  slow  is  the  progress 
of  society  and  human  government,  its  move- 
ments being  not  only  checked  and  retarded, 
but  often  reversed  and  turned  backward;  so 
necessary  is  it  that  men  should  be  educated 
by  painful  processes  before  they  are  ready  to 
choose,  and  fit  to  enjoy,  the  full  blessings  of 
"liberty,  equality  and  fraternity." 

This  is  the  astonishing  fact,  that  the  Eng- 
lish people  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  beheaded  Charles  I,  and  in  ten  years 
invited  his  son,  Charles  II,  to  return  from  the 
continent,  where  he  was  living  in  exile,  and 
take  the  throne  and  the  sceptre,  which  they 
had  wrested  from  the  father. 

To  be  sure,  the  dissenting  bodies  of  Chris- 
tians sent  to  him  before  he  left  the  continent, 
their    representatives,    hoping   to    secure    his 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  5 

promised  protection  of  their  rights  and  privi- 
leges, when  he  should  become  king.  The 
Presbyterians  who  had  found  Cromwell  a  lit- 
tle too  tolerant  to  meet  their  wishes,  hoped  to 
bring  about  through  the  new  king  a  recogni- 
tion of  their  Church  as  the  National  Church. 
This  was  their  conception  of  religious  liberty. 
The  Baptists  formulated  their  propositions, 
asking  for  themselves  and  for  all  men,  as  they 
had  always  done,  full  liberty  of  conscience, 
and  sent  them  signed  by  ten  representative 
men  to  the  claimant  of  the  throne.  Their 
fundamental  principle  and  urgent  request 
found  expression  in  the  following  respectful 
and  ringing  words — 

"Forasmuch  as  it  cannot  be  denied  but  that 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  by  his 
death  and  resurrection,  has  purchased  the  lib- 
erties of  his  own  people,  and  is  thereby  be- 
come their  sole  Lord  and  King,  to  whom,  and 
to  whom  only,  they  owe  obedience  in  things 
spiritual;  we  do  therefore  humbly  beseech 
your  majesty,  that  you  would  engage  your 
royal  word  never  to  erect,  or  suffer  to  be 
erected,  any  such  tyrannical,  popish  and  anti- 


6  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

Christian  hierarchy  (Episcopal,  Presbyterian, 
or  by  what  name  soever  it  may  be  called)  as 
shall  assume  a  power  or  impose  a  yoke  upon 
the  consciences  of  others;  but  that  every  one 
of  your  majesty's  subjects  may  hereafter  be 
left  at  liberty  to  worship  God  in  such  a  way, 
form,  and  manner,  as  shall  appear  to  them  to 
be  agreeable  to  the  mind  and  will  of  Christ, 
revealed  in  his  Word,  according  to  that  pro- 
portion or  measure  of  faith  and  knowledge 
which  they  have  received." 

That  was  a  characteristic  utterance  of  Bap- 
tists at  that  early  date,  demanding  not  tolera- 
tion, but  full  religious  liberty  for  all  men. 
Other  religious  bodies  made  their  appeals  ac- 
cording to  their  conceptions  of  toleration.  The 
king  treated  their  approaches  in  a  conciliatory 
and  crafty  manner,  and  on  May  29,  1660,  the 
thirtieth  anniversary  of  his  birth,  Charles  II 
was  welcomed  back  to  England  with  genuine 
public  rejoicings. 
"He  kept  the  word  of  promise  to  their  ear. 

And  broke  it  to  their  hope." 

The  dissenting  bodies  were  doomed  to  bit- 
ter disappointment.     In  1661  the  Savoy  Con- 


REV.    JOHN    MYLES.  / 

ference  was  called  together,  which  was  an  at- 
tempt to  formulate  and  prescribe  a  national 
creed.  In  1662  the  intolerable  Act  of  Uni- 
formity was  passed  which  compelled  every 
clergyman  of  every  name,  on  or  before  Aug. 
24th,  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  to  assent  in  toto 
to  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  under  pen- 
alty of  losing  his  benefice,  and  compelled 
every  occupant  of  a  benefice  to  receive  a 
bishop's  ordination.  On  June  14,  1662,  Sir 
Henry  Vane  was  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill.  He 
had  been  in  New  England  long  enough  to  be 
the  liberal  Governor  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  (1635  to  1637)-  He  was  the  firm  friend 
of  Roger  Williams,  which  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  he  was  the  firm  friend  of  lib- 
erty. In  the  same  year  the  Corporation  Act 
was  passed,  which  required  every  office-holder 
in  a  municipal  corporation  to  take  an  oath  of 
non-resistance  to  the  crown,  and  to  receive 
the  sacrament  according  to  the  rights  of  the 
Church  of  England,  an  Act  aimed  against 
dissenters  to  keep  them  out  of  office,  munici- 
pal and  parliamentary.  In  1664  the  Conven- 
ticle  Act  was  passed,    imposing  severe    fines 


8  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

Upon  all  persons  attending  meetings  for  wor- 
ship, outside  the  established  Church,  five  per- 
sons above  those  residing  in  the  place  consti- 
tuting an  unlawful  assembly.  And  in  1665  the 
Five  Mile  Act  was  passed,  prohibiting  min- 
isters who  had  been  expelled,  from  settling 
within  five  miles  of  any  town,  and  from  teach- 
ing publicly  or  privately,  till  they  had  first  sub- 
scribed to  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  taken 
the  oath  of  non-resistance  to  the  crown. 
Charles  II  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  it  is 
said  "made  several  attempts  to  grant  tolera- 
tion to  his  co-religionists,  but  he  always  gave 
way  when  the  anti-popish  passion  seized  the 
people."  During  this  reign  of  terror  it  is  said 
that  more  than  eight  thousand  persons  were 
sent  to  prison,  many  were  reduced  to  poverty, 
and  not  a  few  lost  their  lives. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  things  in  Eng- 
land in  the  sixties  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
a  condition  repressive  of  all  freedom  of  con- 
duct, of  speech,  of  faith,  of  conscience  and  al- 
most of  thought.  Of  the  government  under 
Charles  II,  Macaulay  says  in  caustic  language, 
"It  had  just  ability  enough  to  deceive,  and 


REV.    JOHN    MYLES.  9 

just  religion  enough  to  persecute."  The  Act 
of  Uniformity  of  1662  dispossessed  of  their 
parishes,  it  is  said,  two  thousand  ministers, 
who  had  been  appointed  by  Cromwell.  Pres- 
byterians, Independents  and  Baptists  alike 
suffered  ejectment.  Then  came  a  fresh  de- 
portation of  "sifted  wheat"  to  the  shores  of 
New  England.* 

Among  those  who  were  driven  out  by  the 
cruel  Act  of  Uniformity  was  Rev.  John  Myles 
(often  now  spelled  Miles)  the  pastor  of  a 
Baptist  church  in  Ilston,  in  Swansea,  Wales. 
Of  his  early  life  we  know  comparatively  little. 
He  is  reported  to  have  been  born  at  Newton, 
in  Herefordshire,  about  1621,  and  to  have 
matriculated  at  Brasenose  College,  Oxford, 
March  nth,  1636.  "He  sprang  from  a  region 
whose  soil  had  been  enriched  by  the  blood  of 
martyrs  in  medieval  and  later  times."  When 
the  young  man  reached  his  majority  there 
seemed,  however,  to  be  few  traces  of  primi- 

*"That  'shameless  act  of  perfidy,'  as  a  Scotch,  histo- 
rian styles  the  act  of  uniformity,  deprived  two  thous- 
and Presbyterian  usurpers  of  their  livings  in  the  Church 
of  England;  while,  during  the  reign  of  dissent  in  that 
fair  island,  full  seven  thousand  of  the  established 
clergy  were  'imprisoned,  banished,  and  sent  a  starv- 
ing."   Oliver  "The  Puritan  Commonwealth,"  p.  367. 


10  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

tive,  Spiritual  religion  remaining  in  his  coun- 
try. Another  has  said — 'The  destitution  of 
gospel  privileges  in  Wales  about  1641  was 
truly  appalling.  Evangelical  preachers  had 
been  hunted  out  by  the  Laudian  inquisition, 
and  the  great  majority  of  the  ministers  of  the 
established  Church  were  ignorant  and  cor- 
rupt." In  that  year  a  petition  was  sent  to 
the  King  and  Parliament  by  some  distressed 
souls,  stating  that  "after  minutely  searching, 
scarcely  were  there  found  as  many  conscien- 
tious, settled  preachers  in  Wales  as  there  were 
counties  in  it."  Mr.  Myles  not  only  occupied 
a  benefice  under  appointment  of  Cromwell, 
but  his  name  appears  as  one  of  the  "testers" 
(or  triers)  appointed  under  the  "Act  for  the 
Better  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Wales," 
signed  February  22,  1649,  which  had  for  its 
purpose  the  sifting  out  of  corrupt  and  worth- 
less ministers,  and  the  furnishing  of  a  better 
class  for  the  Principality.  This  reveals  the 
excellent  character  of  the  man,  and  the  confi- 
dence which  Cromwell  had  in  his  spirituality 
and  good  judgment. 

Somewhere  about  1645  ^i"-  Myles  entered 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  II 

upon  a  new  spiritual  life,  which  was  to  be  a 
life  of  successful  service  in  the  Christian  min- 
istry on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  He  and  a 
companion,  Mr.  Thomas  Proud,  went  up  to 
London,  where  they  had  opportunity  to  fol- 
low the  new  light  which  had  come  to  them, 
and  were  baptised  into  the  Baptist  Church  in 
Broad  street,  then  in  charge  of  William  Con- 
sett  and  Edward  Draper.  The  Londoners  be- 
lieved that  the  coming  of  these  Welsh  breth- 
ren was  a  direct  and  immediate  answer  to 
prayer,  for  they  had  just  spent  a  day  in  ear- 
nest supplication  before  God,  driven  by  a 
sense  of  the  spiritual  need  which  they  saw  all 
about  them,  "that  He  would  send  laborers  into 
the  dark  corners  of  the  land." 

Mr.  Myles  on  returning  to  Wales  gave  him- 
self unreservedly  to  the  work  of  preaching  the 
gospel,  and  with  such  marked  success  that  on 
Oct.  I,  1649,  ^  Baptist  church  was  organized 
at  Ilston,  of  which  he  became  the  pastor.  Ac- 
cording to  the  records  which  have  been  pre- 
served, this  was  the  first  Baptist  church  in 
Wales.  The  following  paragraph  is  taken 
from  the  records: 


12  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

"We  cannot  but  admire  at  the  unsearchable 
wisdom,  power  and  love  of  God,  in  bringing 
about  his  own  designs,  far  above  and  beyond 
the  capacity  and  understanding  of  the  wisest 
of  men.  Thus,  to  the  glory  of  his  own  great 
name,  hath  He  dealt  with  us ;  for  when  there 
had  been  no  company  or  society  of  people, 
holding  forth  and  professing  the  doctrine, 
worship,  order  and  discipline  of  the  gospel, 
according  to  the  primitive  institution,  that 
ever  we  heard  of  in  all  Wales,  since  the  apos- 
tacy,  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  choose  this  dark 
corner  to  place  his  name  in,  and  honor  us,  un- 
deserving creatures,  with  the  happiness  of  be- 
ing the  first  in  all  these  parts,  among  whom 
was  practiced  the  glorious  ordinance  of  bap- 
tism, and  here  to  gather  the  first  church  of 
baptised  believers." 

If  it  shall  be  found  that  Mr.  Myles  was  in- 
strumental in  founding  the  first  Baptist  church 
in  the  Swansea  of  the  new  world,  a  double 
honor  rests  upon  the  head  of  this  ancient 
preacher  of  truth  and  righteousness.  Eight 
months  before  the  church  at  Ilston  was  organ- 
ized Charles  I  lost  his  head.     It  was  in  the 


REV.    JOHN    MYLES.  13 

atmosphere  of  a  new  and  welcome  toleration 
that  religious  activities  were  greatly  multi- 
plied, the  fear  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  pen- 
alties was  removed,  and  large  spiritual  results 
Avere  secured.  At  the  end  of  the  second  year 
the  little  church  in  Ilston  numbered  fifty-five 
members.  Forty  were  added  in  165 1,  and 
forty-seven  in  1652.  In  eleven  years  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-three  persons  had  been  added 
to  the  church-roll,  all  of  whom  are  named  in 
the  records  of  the  church,  making  it  a  large 
church  for  that  period.  Moreover  several 
other  churches  had  sprung  into  existence  in 
that  section.  In  all  this  activity  and  progress 
Mr.  Myles  was  an  active  agent,  and  an 
acknowledged  leader.  In  1651  he  was  chosen 
to  represent  the  Welsh  Baptists  at  the  minis- 
ters' meeting  in  London.  But  the  accession  of 
Charles  II  to  the  throne  brought  disaster  to 
this  brief  prosperity,  sent  fear  and  consterna- 
tion throughout  the  realm,  made  the  land  un- 
endurable for  lovers  of  soul-liberty,  and  sepa- 
ated  in  thousands  of  instances  pastors  and 
people.  Not  a  few  of  these  pastors  sought 
refuge  and  a  larger  freedom  in  this  new 
world. 


14  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

Mr.  Myles  was  one  of  a  group  of  intelli- 
gent and  sturdy  Welsh  Baptists  who  migrated 
to  America,  and  were  greatly  useful  in  laying 
the  foundations  of  their  denomination  in  this 
country,  being  characterized  by  a  profound 
reverence  for  the  Word  of  God  and  a  clear 
apprehension  of  its  truths,  by  a  love  for  edu- 
cation, and  an  intense  passion  for  liberty  and 
the  rights  of  conscience.  Rhode  Island,  Mas- 
sachusetts, New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Vir- 
ginia and  other  sections  were  all  under  im- 
mense obligation  to  this  Welsh  influence. 
Roger  Williams  (if  he  was  a  Welshman),* 
John  Myles,  Samuel  Jones,  Isaac  Eaton, 
Thomas  Griffith,  Evan  Morgan,  Abel  Mor- 
gan, Morgan  Edwards,  Morgan  John  Rhys, 
David  Thomas,  David  Jones,  John  WiUiams 
and  others,  all  of  them  worthy  compatriots  of 


♦Mr.  Henry  F.  Waters  of  Salem,  Mass.,  a  dis- 
tinguished g-enealogist,  published  in  1889  the  results 
of  his  careful  research  as  to  the  birthplace  of  Roger 
Williams,  in  which  he  disputed  the  traditional  and 
universally  accepted  belief  that  he  was  bom  in  the 
town  of  Gwinear  in  Wales,  and  maintained  that  he 
was  a  native  of  London.  So  strong  was  the  argument 
which  he  presented  that  many  persons  have  regarded 
it  as  conclusive.  There  are  some  historians,  however, 
who  still  hold  to  the  traditional  belief,  and  the  Welsh 
Baptists  still  claim  Rog-er  Williams  as  theirs.  It  is 
doubtful  if  there  will  ever  be  absolute  unanimity  of 
opinion. 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  15 

Vavasor  Powell  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  Christmas  Evans  of  the  eighteenth,  both 
of  whom  fulfilled  a  powerful  ministry  in  their 
native  land,  exerted  an  incalculable  influence 
upon  American  Baptists,  and  it  may  be  said, 
upon  the  religious,  educational  and  political 
life  of  this  Republic.  Brown  University  owes 
its  existence  to  the  initiative  of  these  Welsh 
Baptists."* 

It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  some  portion 
of  Mr.  Myles'  church  at  Ilston  emigrated  with 
him  to  this  country,  and  settled  in  Rehoboth. 
How  large  a  portion,  it  is  impossible  to  ascer- 
tain, certainly  not  the  whole  church,  as  is 
sometimes  represented,  and  probably  a  very 
small  portion  of  it.  For  as  I  have  been  re- 
cently informed  by  a  clergyman  from  Wales, 

♦"The  preponderance  of  the  Welsh  element  in  the 
early  history  of  the  Philadelphia  Association,  and 
especially  of  our  own  church,  is  worthy  of  note.  Of 
the  first  six  joint  pastors  of  Pennepek  and  Philadel- 
phia, three— Samuel  Jones  and  both  the  Morgans- 
were  Welshmen,  to  whom  are  to  be  added  their  im- 
mediate successors,  Jenkin  Jones  and  Morgan  Ed- 
wards. Their  force  of  character  counted  for  far  more 
than  their  mere  numbers.  To  this  fact  is  due  the 
sturdy  Calvinistic  faith,  which  was  characteristic  not 
only  of  our  own,  but  of  nearly  all  the  churches  of 
the  Philadelphia  Association.  Even  as  late  as  Feb- 
ruary 14,  1831,  separate  services  in  the  Welsh  language 
were  held  in  our  church."  "Historical  address  at  the 
Bicentennial  of  the  First  Baptist  Church  in  Philadel- 
phia"  by  William  W.   Keen,  p.   54. 


l6  REV.    JOHN    MYLES. 

well  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  Welsh 
Baptists,  a  church  still  exists  in  old  Swansea, 
v^^hich  dates  its  origin  back  to  1649,  ^.nd  claims 
to  have  maintained  an  unbroken  continuity  of 
life  since  that  time. 

It  was  in  1663  that  Mr.  Myles  and  his  little 
company  of  devoted  followers  came  to  this 
country,  forty-three  years  after  the  Mayflower 
crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  thirty-two  years  af- 
ter the  arrival  of  Roger  Williams.  Whether 
this  company  was  large  or  small,  the  pastor 
brought  the  church  records  with  him,  written 
of  course  in  the  Welsh  tongue.  This  fact  has 
given  rise  undoubtedly  to  the  prevalent  belief 
that  the  church  was  transplanted  bodily.  Very 
fortunately  those  records,  going  back  to  1649, 
have  been  preserved,  having  been  translated 
by  some  imknown  hand,  and  are  still  in  the 
possession  of  the  American  Swansea  Baptist 
church,  and  in  good  condition.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  know  that  the  first  Baptist  church  in 
Pennsylvania,  called  the  Pennepek  or  Lower 
Dublin  church,  kept  its  records  in  the  Welsh 
language  for  many  years,  and  of  course  con- 
ducted its  worship  in  that  tongue,  and  that 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  1 7 

the  first  Baptist  church  in  Delaware  was  a 
Welsh  church,  and  came  bodily  from  Wales. 

It  was  in  the  town  of  Rehoboth,  within  the 
limits  of  Plymouth  Colony,  that  Mr.  Myles 
decided  to  make  a  home  for  himself  and  his 
company,  guided  undoubtedly  by  his  knowl- 
edge that  the  spirit  of  this  Colony  was  more 
tolerant  and  hospitable  than  that  of  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay.* 

The  reputation  of  the  Puritans  for  religious 
intolerance  and  cruel  persecution,  which  had 
been  manifested  again  and  again  in  formal 
legislation  and  open  acts  of  violence,  was  well 
known  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  John 
and  Samuel  Brown  had  been  compelled  to  re- 
turn to  England  because  they  were  guilty  of 
the  crime  of  non-conformity,  being  unwilling 


♦Edgar  D.  Perry  in  an  address  at  the  "Two  Hun- 
dred, and  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  the  Settlement  of 
Rehoboth,"  says  Myles  first  undertook  a  settlement 
at  Hingham.  Goodwin  in  "Pilgrim  Republic"  speaks 
of  the  attempt  being  made  at  Dorchester. 

At  that  time  Rehoboth  was  claimed  by  the  Plymouth 
Colony.  Subsequently  it  passed  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  with  all  the  Plymouth  ter- 
ritory. The  dividing  line  between  Massachusetts  and 
Rhode  Island  was  long  a  matter  of  dispute.  Says  Ed- 
ward Field  in  "State  of  Rhode  Island  and  Providence 
Plantations  at  the  End  of  the  Century,"  Vol.  I.  190: 
"The  Plymouth  Council,  by  letters  patent  of  1629, 
granted  to  Bradford  and  his  associates  territory  as 
far  as  Narragansett   River,   but   this   grant   conveyed 


l8  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

to  renounce  the  book  of  Common  Prayer,  and 
offer  their  worship  to  God  in  the  prescribed 
Puritan  method.  Roger  Williams  had  been 
banished,  and  his  presence  in  England  seven 
years  afterwards,  as  a  distinguished  exile, 
driven  out  into  the  wilderness  by  Puritan  au- 
thority, must  have  produced  a  wide  and  pro- 
found impression  among  the  Baptists  of  the 
mother  country.  Obadiah  Holmes,  who  with 
his  two  Baptist  companions  from  Newport, 
Dr.  John  Clarke  and  John  Crandall,  had  been 
arrested  at  Lynn  for  holding  religious  ser- 
vice in  the  home  of  an  aged  brother,  to  whom 


only  rig-ht  of  estate,  and  not  of  jurisdiction.  The  first 
royal  grant  of  the  territory  was  in  the  Rhode  Island 
charter  of  1663,  when  the  colony  was  given  land  ex- 
tending- 'three  English  miles  to  the  east  and  north- 
east of  the  most  eastern  and  northeastern  parts  of 
Narragansett  Bay.'  In  1691  Plymouth  was  absorbed 
in  the  Massachusetts  charter,  and  henceforth  the  dis- 
pute was  held  with  the  latter  government." 

In  1733  Rhode  Island  petitioned  to  the  King  for  a 
settlement,  claiming  territory  according  to  the  three 
mile  clause  in  her  charter.  Massachusetts  put  in  a 
counter  claim  for  all  territory  as  far  as  Narragansett 
Bay,  based  on  the  Plymouth  grant.  The  Privy  Coun- 
cil finally  referred  the  matter  to  a  Board  of  Commis- 
sioners, chosen  from  New  York.  New  Jersey  and  Nova 
Scotia.  They  met  in  Providence  June  30,  1741,  and  de- 
cided mainly  in  favor  of  the  Rhode  Island  claim,  giv- 
ing to  that  colony  Barrington,  Warren  and  Bristol, 
and  also  Tiverton  and  Little  Compton.  Massachusetts 
appealed  from  the  decision.  In  May,  1746,  the  Coun- 
cil ordered  that  the  award  of  the  Commissioners  be 
confirmed.  Massachusetts  still  objected,  and  refused 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  surveying  the  boundary 
line.  Rhode  Island  did  it  unaided,  leaving  disputes 
which  continued  for  a  century. 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  IQ 

they  were  paying  a  visit  of  Christian  sym- 
pathy, had  been  whipped  unmercifully  on  Bos- 
ton Common,  Clarke  and  Crandall  being  im- 
prisoned and  fined,  and  the  treatment  of  these 
worthies  by  the  Puritan  authorities  had  called 
forth  a  severe  remonstrance  from  Richard 
Saltonstall,  who  had  been  previously  a  Puri- 
tan magistrate,  and  was  then  on  a  visit  to 
England. 

"It  doth  not  a  little  grieve  my  spirit  to  hear 
what  sad  things  are  reported  daily  of  your 
tyranny  and  persecutions  in  New  England  as 
that  you  fine,  whip  and  imprison  men  for  their 
consciences." 

These  things  were  well  known.  Surely  to 
leave  old  England,  even  under  the  reign  of 
Charles  II  for  that  section  of  New  England 
would  have  been  to  jump  out  of  the  frying 
pan  into  the  fire. 

But  even  within  the  limits  of  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  notwithstanding  the  reputation  the 
Pilgrims  had  of  possessing  a  better  spirit, 
which  indeed  they  justly  deserved,  Mr.  Myles 
did  not  find  the  free  air  and  the  bright  sun- 
shine of  an  unrestricted  liberty,  which  he  may 


20  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

have  expected,  nor  was  his  bed  always  a  bed 
of  fragrant  roses.  He  was  compelled  even 
here,  at  first,  to  feel  the  sharp  thorn  of  perse- 
cution. Fourteen  years  before  his  arrival,  in 
1649,  the  year  in  which  Charles  I  was  be- 
headed, and  also  the  year  in  which  Mr.  Myles 
founded  the  first  Baptist  church  in  Wales, 
there  had  been  a  division  in  the  church  of  the 
standing  order  in  Rehoboth,  of  which 
Rev.  Samuel  Newman  was  pastor.  Obadiah 
Holmes  (to  whom  reference  has  already  been 
made  as  being  whipped  by  the  authorities  in 
Boston,  but  who  in  his  exalted  martyr-spirit 
rose  heroically  above  the  pain  of  the  bloody 
lashes,  and  declared  to  the  executioner,  "You 
have  struck  me  as  with  roses")  with  several 
other  members  of  the  church  took  exception 
to  the  doctrine  and  the  domineering  methods 
of  the  pastor,  withdrew  from  the  meetings  of 
the  church  and  organized  meetings  of  their 
own.  Shortly  after  they  were  immersed  by 
Dr.  John  Clarke  and  Mark  Lucar  of  New- 
port.*   Some  writers   speak  of  this   step  at 

•Dr.  John  Clarke  was  one  of  the  founders  of  Aquid- 
neck  (Newport)  In  1638.  He  was  a  learned  physician 
as    well    as    pastor    of    the    first    church    established 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  21 

Rehoboth  as  a  new  church  organization, 
which  would  place  the  date  of  the  origin  of 
the  first  Baptist  church  in  Massachusetts  thir- 
teen or  fourteen  years  before  the  coming  of 
Mr.  Myles.  But  though  the  form  of  church 
organization  in  those  days  was  very  simple,  it 
is  doubtful  if  these  Baptists  did  more  than 
hold  meetings  by  themselves  for  mutual  com- 
fort and  edification.  They  were  of  course 
excommunicated  from  Mr.  Newman's  church, 
and  Mr.  Holmes  and  two  of  his  associates 
were  cited  to  appear  before  the  Plymouth 
Court,  four  petitions  or  papers  of  accusation 
having  been  lodged  against  them,  one  from 
the  neighboring  church  in  Taunton,  one  from 
all  the  ministers  in  Plymouth  Colony  except 
two,  one  from  thirty-five  citizens  of  Rehoboth, 
members  of  Mr.  Newman's  church,  and  a 
fourth  from  what  Benedict  calls  "the  med- 
dling Court  at  Boston,  under  their  Secretary's 
hand,  urging  the  Plymouth  rulers  speedily  to 
suppress  this  growing  schism." 

there,  which  was  undoubtedly  a  Congregational 
church.  After  a  few  years  he  changed  his  religious 
views,  and  assisted  in  organizing  a  Baptist  church, 
becoming  its  first  pastor.  Mark  Lucar  had  recently 
come  from  London,  where  he  had  been  a  member  of 
a  Baptist  church. 


22  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

The  Puritan  rulers  undoubtedly  instigated 
the  whole  proceeding,  as  they  frequently 
manifested  a  lively  sense  of  responsibility  for 
the  consciences  and  conduct  of  their  neigh- 
bors. 

They  had  interfered  with  the  rights  of  the 
Salem  church  in  accepting  Roger  Williams 
as  their  pastor  and  desiring  to  retain  him,  and 
gave  them  no  peace  until  he  was  driven  out. 
In  1642  Governor  Bellingham  wrote  to  the 
Plymouth  Governor,  urging  the  latter  to  "con- 
sider and  advise  with  us  how  we  may  avoid 
those  who  are  secretly  sowing  the  seed  of 
familism  and  anabaptism."  In  1646  the  Con- 
federate Commissioners  urged  upon  each 
General  Court  that  "a  due  watch  be  kept  and 
continued  at  the  door  of  God's  house  that 
anabaptism,  familism  and  all  errors  of  like 
nature  may  be  seasonably  and  duly  sup- 
pressed." Later  the  Puritan  authorities  had 
even  presumed  to  reprimand  the  men  of 
Providence  for  harboring  the  Quakers  within 
their  borders,  and  protested  against  the  exer- 
cise of  such  hospitality.  So  now  the  Massa- 
chusetts  Court  addressed  the  Court  at  Ply- 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  23 

mouth  in  such  words  as  these — "We  have 
heard  heretofore  of  diverse  Anabaptists  arisen 
up  in  your  jurisdiction  and  connived  at;  but 
being  but  few  we  well  hoped  that  it  might 
have  pleased  God,  by  the  endeavors  of  your- 
selves and  the  faithful  elders  with  you,  to 
have  reduced  such  erring  men  again  into  the 
right  way.  But  now  to  our  great  grief  we 
are  credibly  informed  that  your  patient  bear- 
ing with  such  men  hath  produced  another  ef- 
fect, namely,  the  multiplying  and  increasing 
of  the  same  errors,  and  we  fear  may  be  of 
other  errors  also,  if  timely  care  be  not  taken 
to  suppress  the  same.  Particularly  we  under- 
stand that  within  this  few  weeks  there  have 
been  at  Seekonk  thirteen  or  fourteen  rebap- 
tized  (a  swift  progress  in  one  town),  yet  we 
hear  not  if  any  effectual  restriction  is  intend- 
ed thereabouts." 

The  Plymouth  magistrates,  however,  did 
nothing  but  charge  the  accused  to  abstain 
from  practices  offensive  to  others,  and  bound 
them  over,  the  one  for  the  other,  in  the  sum 
of  ten  pounds,  for  their  future  appearance  at 
the    court.     At  the    October  Court  of    that 


24  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

year  (1650)  the  Grand  Jury  found  a  bill 
against  nine  persons,  five  men  and  four 
women,  viz. :  John  Hazel*,  Edward  Smith  and 
wife,  Obadiah  Holmes,  Joseph  Tory  and  wife, 
the  wife  of  James  Mann,  and  William  Buell 
and  wife.  The  crime  with  which  they  were 
charged  was  the  continuing  to  hold  meetings 
on  the  Lord's  day  from  house  to  house  in  de- 
fiance of  the  order  of  the  Court.  There  is, 
however,  no  record  of  any  sentence  being  exe- 
cuted upon  them.  The  bark  of  the  Plymouth 
magistrates  seems  generally  to  have  so  far  ex- 
hausted their  strength  and  satisfied  their  de- 
sire that  they  had  little  strength  or  disposition 
to  do  much  biting.  They  barked  loudly  when 
commanded  by  their  Puritan  neighbors,  but 
their  bite  was  of  a  milder  type  than  the  Bay 
approved. 

Soon  after  this  public  arraignment  of  this 
little  Baptist  group,  Obadiah  Holmes  and 
some  of  his  companions  fled  to  Newport  for 


*John  Hazel  traveled  all  the  way  to  Boston  through 
the  wilderness  the  next  year,  though  upward  of  sixty 
years  of  age,  to  visit  Holmes  in  prison,  and  for  ex- 
pressing sympathy  with  him  at  the  time  of  his  whip- 
ping, was  himself  fined  and  imprisoned,  and  died  from 
the  effects  of  his  imprisonment.  He  has  been  called 
"the  first  martyr  to  Baptist  principles  in  America." 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  2$ 

residence  to  escape  further  annoyance,  and 
enjoy  the  blessings  of  unrestricted  liberty.  It 
was  only  nine  months  after  that  Mr.  Holmes 
made  his  visit  of  Christian  sympathy  to  a 
Baptist  brother  in  Lynn,  which  terminated  so 
painfully,  the  Puritan  magistrates  making  full 
amends  for  the  leniency  of  the  Plymouth  rul- 
ers by  the  severity  of  the  punishment  which 
they  inflicted  upon  the  criminal  now  that  he 
was  in  their  power. 

A  few,  however,  of  these  early  Baptist  dis- 
senters appear  to  have  remained  in  Rehoboth, 
quietly  holding  their  beliefs,  and  waiting  for 
the  favorable  opportunity  to  avow  them  open- 
ly. They  were  compelled  to  wait  thirteen 
years.  The  opportunity  came  in  1663,  ^-t  the 
coming  of  John  Myles  with  his  Welsh  Bap- 
tists. 

The  meeting  for  church  organization  and 
the  declaration  of  fellowship  was  held  in  the 
house  of  John  Butterworth.  Seven  persons, 
whose  names  are  given  in  the  records,  then 
and  there  entered  into  solemn  covenant  to 
walk  together  in  the  truth  and  ordinances  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  they  understood 


26  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

them,  amenable  to  no  human  authority  outside 
of  themselves,  ecclesiastical  or  civil,  recog- 
nizing only  the  Lordship  of  Him,  who  is  Head 
over  all  things  to  his  Church.  (See  Appen- 
dix A.)  The  names  of  the  constituent  mem- 
bers are  as  follows :  John  Myles,  James 
Brown,  Nicholas  Tanner,  Joseph  Carpenter, 
John  Butterworth,  Eldad  Kingsley  and  Ben- 
jamin Alby.  All  these  men  were  men  of  ster- 
ling character  and  clear  convictions,  and  a 
worthy  posterity  honors  and  reveres  their 
memory.  James  Brown  came  of  especially 
good  stock,  as  is  well  known.  His  father, 
John  Brown,  had  been  for  many  years  a  citi- 
zen of  Rehoboth,  and  w^as  one  of  the  magis- 
trates. He  was  far  advanced  in  his  views  of 
religious  liberty  long  before  the  organization 
of  the  church.  In  1655  it  is  reported  that  he 
expressed  before  the  Court  his  conscientious 
scruples  against  taxing  all  the  inhabitants  for 
the  support  of  religion,  and  generously  offered 
himself  to  pay  the  taxes  of  all  his  townsmen, 
who  refused  for  conscience  sake.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  names  of  the  sisters  are  not 
given    with  the  names    of  the  brethren;    yet 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  '2^ 

there  were  undoubtedly  wives  and  mothers 
who  formed  an  active  and  influential  part  of 
that  church  organization.  Whoever  heard  of 
a  good  thing  starting  in  this  world,  in  which 
consecrated  women  did  not  have  a  hand  ?  The 
world  has  long  given  to  woman  ample  credit 
for  the  introduction  of  evil ;  it  is  time  she  had 
her  proper  recognition  in  all  movements  for 
the  moral  and  religious  progress  of  the  world, 
and  its  restoration  to  its  lost  fellowship  with 
God.  Her  name  may  be  omitted  in  the  earth- 
ly records,  but  it  will  stand  high  in  the  records 
of  Heaven.* 

So    far    as    appears    from    any    accessible 
sources    of   information,    only   one   of    these 


*It  may  have  been  customary  to  omit  the  names  of 
female  members  In  such  formal  action  as  entering  into 
church  covenant.  When  in  1682,  in  Kittery,  Me.,  a 
few  Baptists  under  the  leadership  of  William  Screven, 
organized  what  was  the  first  Baptist  church  in  the 
District  of  Maine  (in  a  few  months  it  was  transferred 
by  reason  of  persecution  to  Charleston,  S.  C.)  the  cov- 
enant was  signed  by  the  male  members  only.  It  Is 
known  that  several  women  had  been  recently  bap- 
tized there,  including  the  wife  and  mother-in-law  of 
Mr.  Screven,  yet  their  names  do  not  appear,  attached 
to  the  covenant.  After  the  record  of  the  covenant  and 
the  signatures  of  ten  brethren,  the  following  attesta- 
tion is  recorded:  "This  is  a  true  copy  compared  with 
the  original  and  owned  by  all  our  brethren  and  seven 
sisters,  as  attest 

Wm,    Screven   in 
behalf  of  the  rest." 
See  "Hist,  of  Baptists  in  Maine,"  pp.  20-23,  by  Rev. 
H.  S.  Burrage.  also  "Hist,  of  First  Baptist  Church  in 
Boston,"   pp.   179-183,  by  Rev.   N.   E.  Wood. 


28  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

seven  brethren,  Nicholas  Tanner,  accom- 
panied Mr.  Myles  in  his  migration  from 
Wales.  As  we  do  not  know  how  many  com- 
panions he  had  on  his  journey  to  this  new 
world,  so  we  do  not  know  what  became  of 
them  after  their  arrival.  Backus  says: 
"Nicholas  Tanner,  Obadiah  Bowen,  John 
Thomas  and  others  also  came  over  to  this 
country  (that  is,  with  Mr.  Myles)  and  one 
of  Bowen's  posterity  is  now  Chancellor  of 
the  University  at  Providence."  The  first 
Chancellor  of  Brown  University  was  Stephen 
Hopkins,  LL.  D.  (1764- 1785),  and  the  second 
Chancellor  was  Jabez  Bowen,  LL.  D.  (1785- 
181 5.)  It  is  possible  that  some  of  the  Welsh 
immigrants  were  detained  for  good  reasons 
from  that  first  meeting  for  organization,  who 
subsequently  came  into  the  fellowship.  It 
seems  as  if  the  little  church  organized  itself 
about  the  strong  personality  of  the  pastor,  and 
the  imported  church  records.  , 

This  church  was  the  fifth  Baptist  church  in 
America.  (See  Appendix  I.)  The  church  in 
Providence,  founded  by  Roger  Williams,  had 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  29 

had  an  existence  for  twenty-five  years.*  The 
traditional  date  of  the  origin  of  the  first  church 
in  Newport,  founded  by  Dr.  John  Clarke  upon 
the  remains  of  a  Congregational  Church,  is 
1644.  About  the  year  1652  there  was  a  divi- 
sion in  the  Providence  Church,  which  led  to 
the  formation  of  a  second  church  under  the 
leadership  of  Thomas  Olney.  This  church 
ceased  to  exist  in  17 18,  after  the  pastorates  of 
Mr.  Olney  and  his  son,  Thomas,  Jr.  In  the 
year  1656  there  was  a  division  in  the  church 
in  Newport,  and  a  Six  Prijiciple  Baptist 
church  was  formed,  which  still  exists  (now 
called  the  Second  Baptist  church),  and  is  in 
full  fellowship  with  regular  Baptist  churches. 

At  the  first,  the  little  church  in  Rehoboth 
appears  to  have  enjoyed  a  measure  of  peace, 
and  to  have  been  permitted  without  violent 
opposition  to  worship  God  "under  its  own 
vine  and  fig  tree,"  though  not  without  many 
misgivings,  heart-burnings  and  generous  at- 
tempts to  reclaim  its  members  from  the  er- 


♦For  an  attempt  to  found  a  Baptist  church  In  Wey- 
mouth in  1639  and  an  account  of  its  supposed  author, 
Hanserd  Knollys,  see  Appendix  G. 


30  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

ror  of  their  ways,  on  the  part  of  the  Standing 
Order.  Dr.  Mather,  speaking  of  them,  says: 
"There  being  many  good  men  among  those, 
I  do  not  know  that  they  have  been  persecuted 
with  any  harder  means  than  those  of  kind 
conferences  to  reclaim  them."  Such  generous 
interest  seems  to  have  been  unappreciated  and 
unsuccessful.  Rev.  Samuel  Newman,  the  es- 
tablished pastor  of  the  town,  died  the  year  of 
Mr.  Myles'  arrival.  Whether  the  loss  of  his 
conscientious  and  active  guardianship  over 
the  religious  faiths  of  the  people  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  temporary  cessation  of 
hostility  against  the  new  movement,  we  may 
not  say.  The  cessation,  however,  was  only 
temporary.  Four  years  afterwards  we  find 
this  record: 

"At  the  Court  holden  at  Plymouth  the  2d 
of  July,  1667,  before  Thomas  Prince,  Gov- 
ernor (seven  assistants  are  also  mentioned, 
including  John  Alden  and  William  Bradford) 
>!c  *  *  *  *  Mj..  Myles  and  Mr.  Brown, 
for  their  breach  of  order,  in  setting  up  of  a 
public  meeting  without  the  knowledge  and  ap- 
probation of  the  Court  to  the  disturbance  of 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  3 1 

the  peace  of  the  place,  are  fined  each  of  them 
five  pounds,  and  Mr.  Tanner  the  sum  of  one 
pound,  and  we  judge  that  their  continuance 
at  Rehoboth,  being  very  prejudicial  to  the 
peace  of  that  church  and  that  town,  may  not 
be  allowed,  and  do  therefore  order  all  per- 
sons concerned  therein  wholly  to  desist  from 
the  said  meeting  in  that  place  or  township, 
within  this  month.  Yet  in  case  they  shall  re- 
move their  meeting  into  some  other  place, 
where  they  may  not  prejudice  any  other 
church,  and  shall  give  us  any  reasonable  satis- 
faction respecting  their  principles,  we  know 
not  but  they  may  be  permitted  by  this  govern- 
ment so  to  do."*  Which  being  interpreted  is 
— Stop  your  meetings  for  worship  or  get  out, 
or  rather,  if  you  conclude  to  move  to  some 
other  place,  such  as  we  may  approve,  and  shall 
satisfy  us  as  to  your  views  and  intentions,  we 
may  permit  you  to  go.  This  seems  to  be  a 
rather  peculiar   form  of  banishment.    What 


♦Goodwin  makes  the  astonishing  asertion:  "There 
was  in  this  no  persecution  because  of  religious  belief, 
for  the  penalty  was  only  that  which  would  have  been 
laid  on  the  most  orthodox  of  Gongiregationalists  who 
had  in  like  manner  established  a  new  and  poor  church 
In   an   existing  parish."     "The   Pilgrim   Republic,"    p 


32  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

was  the  occasion  of  this  new  outbreak  we  do 
not  know.  Baylies  strangely  suggests  that 
"neither  the  designs  nor  characters  of  Myles 
and  his  church  were  understood  at  this  time." 
But  Mr.  Myles  had  lived  among  them  for 
four  years,  and  held  meetings,  and  preached, 
and  gathered  members  to  his  flock.  In  |May, 
i666Jhe  was  "received  an  inhabitant  among 
them,"  that  is,  into  full  citizenship,  as  Mr. 
Tanner,  his  Welsh  member,  had  been  in  April 
of  that  year.  Moreover  on  April  13  of  that 
year,  he  was  voted  by  the  town  "to  be  a  lec- 
turer, viz.,  to  preach  once  a  fortnight  on  the 
week  day,  once  on  the  Sabbath  day,"  to  assist 
the  pastor  of  the  established  church.  Rev. 
Zachariah  Symmes,  who  was  in  feeble  health. 
Again  on  August  13,  it  was  voted  "that  Mr. 
Myles  shall  still  continue  a  lecturer  on  the 
week  day,  and  further  on  the  Sabbath."  This 
was  of  course  a  temporary  arrangement,  un- 
til some  one  of  their  own  communion  could 
be  found,  yet  was  an  expression  of  great  lib- 
erality. Moreover,  Baptists  had  lived  among 
them  for  eighteen  years,  and  had  not  been  al- 
together unknown  or  ignored  by  the  Honorable 
Court. 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  33 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  occasion 
of  this  fresh  exhibition  of  hostiUty  and  perse- 
cution, it  proved  to  be  the  last  one.  Indeed 
it  may  be  said  that  again  the  bark  of  the  Ply- 
mouth Court  was  worse  than  its  bite,  for  in 
less  than  four  months  from  this  decision  of 
the  authorities  (Oct.  30,  1667)  an  amicable 
arrangement  was  entered  into,  whereby  a  por- 
tion of  territory  lying  adjacent  to  Rehoboth, 
called  Wannamoisett,  was  set  apart  for  the 
occupation  of  the  Baptists,  and  such  persons 
as  might  wish  to  join  them ;  for  such  had  been 
the  conduct  and  spirit  of  the  Baptists  that  they 
had  won  the  confidence  and  friendship  of  not 
a  few  of  their  neighbors  and  fellow  citizens. 
This  new  town  was  named  Swansea,  after  the 
Welsh  town  from  which  Mr.  Myles  had  come. 
(See  Appendix  B.)  This  was  the  habit  of 
many  of  the  New  England  settlers,  to  give  to 
the  new  homes  the  names  of  their  places  of 
residence  in  the  "Old  Home."  This  territory 
has  since  been  divided  into  the  towns  of  Swan- 
sea, Somerset,  Warren  and  Barrington,  the 
last  two  being  now  included  in  Rhode  Island. 
This    settlement  was    supposed  by  the    Ply- 


j4  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

mouth  magistrates  evidently  to  be  sufficiently 
removed  from  Rehoboth  not  to  be  "prejudi- 
cial to  the  peace  of  that  church  and  town," 
and  was  undoubtedly  acceptable  to  the  Bap- 
tists, for  it  required  no  great  journey,  and 
they  w^ould  still  be  near  the  Baptist  settle- 
ments in  Providence  and  Newport.  It  seems 
that  the  name  "Rehoboth,"  which  means  "The 
Lord  hath  made  room  for  his  beloved,"  was 
not  quite  applicable  to  the  town  which  bore  it. 
It  should  have  signified  "The  Lord  hath  made 
room  for  some  of  his  beloved." 

If  the  description  of  the  town  given  by  Rev. 
Samuel  Peters,  LL.  D.,  in  his  "Life  of  Rev. 
Hugh  Peters,"  in  which  he  strangely  con- 
founds Rev.  Samuel  Newman,  who  prepared 
a  Concordance  to  the  Bible,  with  the  famous 
Alexander  Cruden,  the  author  of  "Cruden's 
Concordance,"  was  accurate,  the  town  could 
hardly  be  regarded  as  an  attractive  place  of 
residence  at  that  time.  This  distinguished 
divine  says:  "It  also  was  a  frontier  against 
the  Pequod  Indians,  at  the  head  of  a  creek 
emptying  into  Narragansett  bay,  where  were 
plenty  of  fish  and  oysters,  on  which  the  set- 


REV.  JOHN   MYLES.  35 

tiers  might  live  and  protect  Boston,  if  the  In- 
dians did  not  scalp  them.  This  pious  clergy- 
man (Mr.  Newman)  with  his  pious  compan- 
ions, not  knowing  their  danger,  went  and 
formed  the  settlement  of  Rehoboth;  the  scite 
being  pleasant,  the  air  salubrious,  and  the 
prospect  horrible." 

In  the  new  town  of  Swansea  set  apart  for 
this  Baptist  colony  (an  example  which  was 
followed  in  the  early  history  of  Western  Mas- 
sachusetts, only  there  the  boundary  lines  were 
very  irregularly  drawn,  so  as  to  include  the 
existing  homesteads  of  all  Baptist  families)* 
the  little  church  found  its  permanent  home, 
and  through  the  vicissitudes  of  two  hundred 
and  forty-two  years  has,  by  the  protecting 
grace  of  God,  continued  to  this  day.  They 
built  their  first  meeting-house  about  three 
miles  northeast  of  Warren,  and  a  second  one 
in  1679  near  Kelley's  Bridge,  and  also  a  par- 


•The  town  of  Cheshire  in  Massachusetts  was  origin- 
ally settled  by  Baptists  from  Swansea,  Warwick,  New- 
port and  Providence,  R.  I.,  and  was  at  first  called  New 
Providence.  It  was  taken  in  part  from  the  town  of 
Adams  and  in  part  from  the  town  of  Lanesboro,  and 
was  set  apart  for  Baptist  occupation,  the  boundary 
line  being  very  irregular.  (See  "Historical  Sketch  of 
Baptist  Beginnings  in  Berkshire."  by  Rev.  W.  H. 
Eaton,  D.  D. 


36  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

sonage  for  their  minister.  Both  meeting 
house  and  parsonage  were  erected  by  vote  of 
the  town. 

Among  the  men  intimately  associated  with 
Mr.  Myles  in  the  founding  of  the  town  was 
Captain  Thomas  Willett.  They  two  are  called 
"the  fathers  of  the  town.*'*  Captain  Willett's 
wife  was  a  sister  of  James  Brown,  who  was 
one  of  the  constituent  members  of  the  church, 
but  Mr.  Willett  was  not  a  Baptist,  and  he  rep- 
resented a  considerable  party  who  were  not 
members  of  the  church,  and  yet  were  promi- 
nent in  the  management  of  town  affairs.  In 
the  records  of  the  Court  of  New  Plymouth  for 
1667,  we  find  this  action  taken — "The  Court 
hath  appointed  Capt.  Thomas  Willett,  Mr. 
Paine,  Sen.,  Mr.  Brown,  Mr.  John  Allen  and 
John  Butterworth,  to  have  the  trust  of  admit- 


♦Captain  Willett  was  a  man  of  strong  character,  and 
an  acknowledged  leader  wherever  he  was.  He  was 
one  of  the  last  of  the  Leyden  company  who  came  to 
Plymouth.  In  1647  he  became  the  successor  of  Captain 
Miles  Stan  dish  in  the  command  of  the  militia  of  Ply- 
mouth, and  for  a  long  period  of  years  was  elected  one 
of  the  Governor's  assistants.  At  a  later  period  of  his 
life  he  removed  to  New  York,  and  became  the  first 
English  Mayor  after  its  cession  from  the  Dutch.  Re- 
turning to  that  part  of  Swansea,  which  is  now  Bar- 
rington,  he  died  Aug.  4,  1674,  before  the  breaking  out 
of  King  Philip's  war.  His  daughter,  Sarah,  married 
Rev.  John  Eliot,  the  apostle  to  the  Indians. 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  37 

tance  of  town  inhabitants  in  said  town,  and 
to  have  the  disposal  of  the  land  therein,  and 
ordering  the  other  affairs  of  said  town.  The 
Court  do  allow  and  approve  that  the  township 
granted  unto  Capt.  Thomas  Willett,  and 
others,  his  neighbors,  at  Wannamoisett,  and 
parts  adjacent,  shall  henceforth  be  called  and 
known  by  the  name  of  Swansea." 

Mr.  Paine  as  well  as  Captain  Willett  was 
a  Pedobaptist.  This  official  authorization  of 
trustees  to  determine  the  terms  of  admission 
to  citizenship  led  to  a  unique  condition  of 
things,  not  consonant  with  the  principles  of 
full,  unrestricted  religious  liberty. 

It  is  said  that  Captain  Willett,  shortly  af- 
ter the  grant  of  territory,  made  the  following 
propositions  to  his  associates: 

"i.  That  no  erroneous  person  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  township,  either  as  an  inhabi- 
tant or  a  sojourner. 

2.  That  no  man  of  any  evil  behaviour  as 
contentious  persons,  &c.,  be  admitted. 

3.  That  none  may  be  admitted  who  may 
become  a  charge  to  the  place." 


38  REV.  JOHN   MYLES. 

These  propositions  were  presented  to  the 
church,  and  a  reply  defining  with  great  par- 
ticularity the  church's  understanding  of  them 
was  formulated  and  returned  to  Capt.  Willett, 
officially  signed  "in  behalf  and  in  the  name  of 
the  church  meeting  at  Swansea"  by  John 
Myles,  pastor,  and  John  Butterworth.  (See 
Appendix  C,  also  Appendix  D).  This  reply 
while  admitting  to  citizenship  all  those  who 
held  different  views  from  those  entertained  by 
the  members  of  the  church  on  the  mode  and 
the  proper  subjects  of  baptism,  discriminated 
positively  against  all  Roman  Catholics,  and  all 
persons  denying  evangelical  views  which  are 
enumerated  at  length,  and  "holding  damnable 
heresies  inconsistent  with  the  faith  of  the  gos- 
pel," Anglicans,  Lutherans,  Socinians,  Sabba- 
tarians, Quakers  and  some  others.  "It  is  evi- 
dent," says  the  editor  of  Backus'  History,  "that 
this  ancient  Baptist  church  was  not,  at  first, 
clear  in  the  view  that  civil  government  has  no 
right  of  interference  with  religious  belief,  and 
that  it  took  upon  itself  the  dangerous  task  of 
deciding  between  Christian  doctrines  as  more 
or  less  essential."    And  Prof.  A.  H.  Newman 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  39 

says :  "Here  we  see  a  result  of  Myles'  train- 
ing in  connection  with  the  state-church  system 
of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate. 
He  had  failed  to  grasp  the  great  principle  of 
absolute  Hberty  of  conscience  which  the  mass 
of  Antipedobaptists  from  the  reformation  time 
onward  had  consistently  advocated  and  prac- 
ticed."* 

The  Baptist  interpretation  of  religion,  that  it 
is  a  matter  between  the  individual  soul  and 
God,  and  that  the  soul  in  religious  matters  is 
amenable  to  no  human  authority,  civil  or  ec- 
clesiastical, wherever  it  has  been  truly  held, 
has  always  had  for  its  corollary  the  sublime 


•See  also  Goodwin's  "Pilgrim  Republic,"  p.  524.— Hon. 
Georg-e  P.  Hoar  delivered  the  oration  at  the  275th  an- 
niversary of  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims,  Dec.  21,  1895. 
In  extenuation  of  their  failure  to  make  a  practical  ap- 
plication of  the  principles  of  civil  and  religious  liberty, 
he  cited  other  illustrations  of  intolerance  at  that  time, 
saying  among  other  things:  "Some  of  our  Baptist 
friends  wanted  the  term  'damnable  heretics'  to  include 
Unitarians  and  to  have  them  banished."  This  refer- 
ence, as  he  privately  confessed,  was  to  the  church  in 
Swansea  and  its  action  upon  Captain  Willett's  pro- 
posals. While  it  is  true  that  these  Swansea  Baptists 
did  not  propose  to  "banish"  any  one,  they  did  consent 
to  restrict  the  privileges  of  citizenship  among  them. 
But  Senator  Hoar  should  have  remembered  and  ac- 
knowledged that  in  this  respect  they  did  not  occupy 
the  position,  or  reflect  the  sentiments,  of  the  Baptists 
of  their  time  in  Providence,  Newport  and  Boston.  His 
statement  would  have  been  more  just,  if  he  had  par- 
ticularized his  reference,  and  asserted  its  wholly  ex- 
ceptional character. 


40  REV.   JOHN  MYLES. 

doctrine  of  soul-liberty.  Mr.  Myles,  who  un- 
doubtedly drew  up  the  reply  to  Capt.  Willett's 
propositions,  though  facing  in  the  right  direc- 
tion, had  not  yet  fully  arrived.  He  needed  to 
take  a  few  lessons  of  Roger  Williams  and  John 
Clarke.  Though  this  reply  seems  like  a  decla- 
ration of  principles,  it  should  be  said  that  there 
is  no  evidence  that  Swansea  ever  in  a  single 
instance  carried  out  its  religious  restrictions 
against  new  comers.  Pastor  and  people  un- 
doubtedly soon  fell  into  line  with  Providence, 
and  Newport,  and  Boston,  and  joined  hands 
with  them  in  the  struggle  which  was  then  wag- 
ing, for  the  separation  of  church  and  state,  and 
did  not  reach  its  complete  victory  even  in  New 
England  till  more  than  a  century  and  a  half 
later.* 

It  would  be  interesting,  did  time  permit,  to 
trace  in  detail  the  fortunes  of  the  little  church 
and  community  during  the  stormy  times  that 
soon  followed  in  King  Philip's  war,  and  also 
to  sketch  the  useful  career  of  this  brave  man 

♦It  was  not  until  the  year  1833  that  Massachusetts 
erased  from  its  statute  books  the  last  trace  of  op- 
pressive religious  legislation,  and  declared  itself  in 
tavor  of  full  relig-ious  liberty.  See  "New  England's 
Struggles  for  Religious  Liberty,"  p.  247  sq.,  by  Rev. 
David  B.  Ford,  D.  D. 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  4^ 

of  God,  who  escaped  the  persecutions  of  the 
old  world  to  suffer  some  persecution  and  much 
hardness,  for  the  sake  of  truth  and  conscience, 
in  the  wilderness  of  the  new  world.  The  parish 
was  a  large  one,  and  he  was  its  only  minister, 
some  of  his  parishioners  travelling  five  or  six 
miles  to  enjoy  his  ministry,  and  all,  whether 
Baptists  or  not,  joining  in  his  support.  "Pas- 
tor's lots"  were  set  apart  for  his  use.  (See 
Appendix  E.)  A  school  was  established  by 
vote  of  the  town  in  1673  "^^^  the  teaching  of 
grammar,  rhetoric,  and  arithmetic,  and  the 
tongues  of  Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrew,  also  to 
read  English  and  to  write."  Mr.  Myles  was 
chosen  schoolmaster  for  the  town.  He  must 
have  been  competent  by  reason  of  his  Univer- 
sity training  to  teach  these  languages,  but  it  is 
doubtful  if  a  heavy  demand  was  made  upon  his 
services  in  this  direction.  Very  likely  these 
languages  were  what  would  be  denominated  in 
modern  times  "electives"  and  not  "required 
studies."  In  fulfilling  his  twofold  office  it  was 
his  custom  to  go  from  one  section  of  the  town 
to  another  with  his  Bible  and  schoolbooks  in 
his  saddle  bags.  He  has  been  called  "the  Pes- 
talozzi  of  America." 


4^  REV.    JOHN    MYLES. 

His  appointment  as  schoolmaster  seems  to 
have  been  a  Hfe  tenure  and  to  have  been  trans- 
f errible.  "It  was  voted  and  ordered  *  *  * 
that  a  salary  of  £40  per  annum  in  current 
country  pay,  which  passeth  from  man  to  man, 
be  duly  paid  from  time  to  time,  and  at  all  times 
hereafter  to  the  schoolmaster  thereof,  and  that 
Mr.  John  Myles,  the  present  pastor  of  the 
church  here  assembling,  be  the  schoolmaster, 
otherwise  to  have  power  to  dispose  the  same 
to  an  able  schoolmaster,  during  the  said  pas- 
tor's life,  and  from  and  after  his  decease- that 
the  school  and  salary  thereto  belonging  during 
their  respective  natural  lives ;  provided,  never- 
theless, that  the  said  school  and  forty  pounds 
salary  aforesaid  shall  be  continued  to  the  said 
John  Myles,  and  to  the  said  successive  pastors 
for  and  during  such  time  as  he  or  they,  and 
any  or  every  one  of  them  shall  be  contented  to 
take  their  ministerial  maintenance  by  weekly 
contributions  and  no  longer." 

"It  is  further  ordered  that  said  school  shall 
be  only  free  to  such  children  whose  parents 
pay  any  rates  towards  the  said  school,  and  to 
none  other,  and  that  the  schoolmaster  and  sue- 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  43 

cessive  schoolmasters  thereof  for  the  time  be- 
ing shall  have  liberty  to  take  in  any  other 
scholars  they  think  fit,  to  be  educated  there, 
and  every  scholar  at  first  entrance  shall  pay 
twelve  pence  in  silver  towards  buying  of  books 
for  the  said  school." 

In  the  midst  of  the  peace  and  prosperity  of 
the  community,  the  growth  of  the  church,  the 
provisions  for  the  education  of  the  young,  the 
increasing  comfort  of  the  homes,  suddenly,  in 
1675,  King  Philip's  war  burst  upon  the  town. 
An  historian  says:  "Swansea  received  the 
first  blow  in  this  sanguinary  war.  Houses 
were  robbed  and  cattle  killed.  Four  days  later 
the  massacre  commenced.  Nine  of  the  inhabi- 
tants were  slain  and  seven  wounded."  Mr. 
Myles'  house  was  used  as  a  garrison,  and  he 
himself  became  the  brave  leader  of  his  little 
flock  in  the  defence  of  their  firesides.  Assist- 
ance arriving  from  neighboring  towns,  the  In- 
dians fled,  leaving  in  their  wake  mutilated 
bodies  and  burning  buildings.  The  families  of 
the  parish  were  scattered,  seeking  shelter  in 
Providence  and  Newport.  Mr.  Myles  found 
his  way  to  Boston,  where  in  1665,  two  years 


44  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

after  the  Swansea  church  was  formed,  a  Bap- 
tist church  had  been  organized  under  the 
leadership  of  Thomas  Goold,  who  was  a  friend 
of  Henry  Dunster,  the  first  president  of  Har- 
vard University,  a  man  who  was  said  to  be  "a 
miracle  of  scholarship,"  but  being  compelled  to 
dissent  from  the  scripturalness  of  infant  bap- 
tism, or  as  Cotton  Mather  said :  "having  fallen 
into  the  briars  of  antipedobaptism,"  and  being 
unable  to  recant,  he  was  ejected  from  his  of- 
fice.* 

President  Dunster  undoubtedly  attended  the 
early  conferences  of  the  Baptists  in  Boston, 


•Brooks  Adams,  in  "The  Emancipation  of  Massachu- 
setts," p.  107,  says:  "Henry  Dunster  was  an  uncommon 
man.  Famed  for  piety  in  an  aere  of  fanaticism,  learn- 
ed, modest,  and  brave,  by  the  unremitting  toil  of 
thirteen  years  he  raised  Harvard  from  a  school  to  the 
position  which  it  has  since  held;  and  though  very  poor, 
and  starving  on  a  wretched  and  ill-paid  pittance,  he 
gave  his  beloved  college  one  hundred  acres  of  land  at 
the  moment  of  its  sorest  need.  Yet  he  was  a  criminal, 
for  he  would  not  baptize  infants,  and  he  met  with 
'the  lenity  and  patience'  (?)  which  the  elders  were  not 
unwilling  should  be  used  toward  the  erring.  He  was 
indicted  and  convicted  of  disturbing  church  ordinances, 
and  deprived  of  his  office  in  October,  1654."  See  also 
Quincy's  "History  of  Harvard,"  and  "Life  of  Henry 
Dunster,"  by  Jeremiah  Chaplin,  D.  D. 

Thomas  HoUis,  a  Baptist  merchant  of  London,  sub- 
sequently endowed  iprofessorships  in  Harvard  Uni- 
versity and  founded  scholarships  for  the  benefit  of 
Baptist  students,  which  are  still  administered  by  the 
University.  See  in  Appendix  F  an  illuminating  letter 
from  Mr.  Hollis  to  Rev.  Ephraim  Wheaton,  the  third 
pastor  of  the  Swansea  church. 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  45 

and  had  large  influence  in  the  development  of 
their  views  and  their  establishment  in  the 
truth,  but  he  died  before  it  was  deemed  pru- 
dent, or  found  possible,  openly  to  effect  a 
church  organization.  Mr.  Myles  was  acting 
pastor  of  the  Boston  church  for  fifteen  months 
and  more,  the  first  pastor,  Thomas  Goold,  hav- 
ing died  Oct.  27,  1675,  and  his  services  were 
so  acceptable  that  he  was  urged  to  remain  as 
permanent  pastor.  His  presence  in  Boston 
was  not  acceptable,  however,  to  the  Puritan 
authorities.  He  was  arrested  and  brought  be- 
fore the  Governor's  Council,  charged  with  vio- 
lating the  laws  by  holding  unauthorized  meet- 
ings for  worship.  After  being  reprimanded  he 
was  let  go,  inasmuch  as  he  was  only  a  so- 
journer in  the  Bay  Colony,  and  expected  to  re- 
turn to  his  loved  Swansea  so  soon  as  the  In- 
dian war  should  be  terminated.  After  the  war 
was  over,  the  people  returned  to  their  deso- 
lated homes  to  lay  amid  the  ashes  of  their  for- 
mer prosperity  the  foundations  of  a  new  life, 
domestic,  civil,  educational  and  rehgious. 

At  a  town  meeting  held  May  27,  1678,  "John 
Allen  and  John  Brown  were  chosen  to  draw 


46  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

Up  a  letter  in  behalf  of  the  church  and  town,  to 
be  sent  to  Mr.  John  Myles,  pastor  of  the 
church  and  minister  of  the  town,  manifesting 
their  desire  of  his  return  to  them ;  and  Thomas 
Esterbrooks  was  chosen  to  carry  the  town's 
letter  to  Mr.  Myles,  at  Boston."  From  this 
action  it  appears  that  in  this  town,  on  a  small 
scale,  church  and  state  were  pretty  closely  al- 
lied, if  not  actually  wedded.  It  was  the  town 
that  voted  to  build  a  new  meeting  house  in  the 
place  of  the  one  destroyed  by  the  Indians,  and 
determined  its  location,  and  to  build  also  a  new 
house  for  the  pastor,  "to  indemnify  him  for 
debts  due  him  in  the  time  of  the  Indian  war." 
This  civil  aid  was  not  unknown  in  other  New 
England  towns,  and  indicated  no  right  to  in- 
terfere in  church  affairs.  My  Myles  gave  to 
the  town  the  following  receipt:  "Received  of 
the  town  the  full  of  all  debts  due  to  me  from 
said  town  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  till 
the  i8  of  June,  1679." 

With  the  interruption  of  a  visit  or  two  to  his 
brethren  in  Boston,  to  whom  his  visits  were 
always  most  welcome,  and  frequent  mission- 
ary excursions  in  the  neighborhood,  Mr.  Myles 


REV.   JOHN  MYLES.  47 

spent  the  little  remainder  of  his  eventful  and 
laborious  life  with  his  Swansea  church.  He 
died  Feb.  3,  1683,  at  the  early  age  of  62  years, 
having  spent  twenty  years  in  his  adopted 
country.  Such  was  his  learning,  his  piety,  his 
strength  of  character,  his  courage  of  convic- 
tion, his  conciliatory  spirit  and  his  willingness 
to  suffer  for  conscience  and  truth,  that  he 
commended  himself  to  friends  and  foes  alike.* 
Backus  speaks  of  Mr.  Myles,  writing  in 
1777,  as  the  learned  and  pious  Mr.  Myles 
*  *  *  *  whose  memory  is  still  precious 
among  us."  Cotton  Mather  associates  him 
with  that  eminent  Baptist,  who  was  in  this 
country  but  a  short  time,  viz.:  Hanserd 
Knollys,  and  calls  them  "godly  anabaptists," 

•Judged  by  the  church  covenant  and  the  reply  of  the 
church  to  the  proposals  of  Captain  Willett,  both  of 
which  were  undoubtedly  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  Myles,  he 
was  evangelical  in  his  doctrinal  views  and  sufficiently 
Calvinistic,  though  he  probably  did  not  belong  to  the 
extreme  wing  as  represented  by  a  ministerial  contem- 
porary. Rev,  Mr.  Treat  of  Eastham,  whose  biographer 
portrays  him  as  a  man  of  much  kindness  of  heart,  but 
a  Calvinist  of  the  straitest  sect.  "He  did  not  profess 
that  moderate  Calvinism  which  is  so  common  at  the 
present  time,  and  which  by  giving  up,  or  explaining 
away  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  the  party  like  a  porcu- 
pine disarmed  of  its  auills,  is  unable  to  resist  the 
feeblest  attack,  but  consistent  Calvinism,  with  all  its 
hard  and  sharp  points,  by  which  it  can  courageously 
defend  itself:  in  fine,  such  Calvinism  as  the  adaman- 
tine author  of  the  system  would  himself  have  avowed." 


48  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

who  "have  a  respectful  character  in  the 
churches  of  this  wilderness."  And  a  recent 
writer  truthfully  characterizes  him  as  "a  man 
of  good  talents  and  education,  with  unusual 
energy  of  character.  He  was  liberal  in  his 
religious  opinions,  but  not  loose;  he  was  an 
apostle  and  not  a  proselyter.  His  sacrifices  for 
conscience's  sake  testify  to  his  adherence  to 
truth,  and  his  interest  in  civil  society  is  evinced 
by  the  labors  which  he  undertook  for  its  pros- 
perous advancement.  His  burial  place  is  un- 
known, but  it  is  supposed  to  be  with  many  of 
his  people,  near  his  home  and  place  of  preach- 
ing, at  Tyler's  Point  (now  Barrington),  Swan- 
sea. Silence  alone  marks  the  resting  place  of 
this  pioneer  and  founder  of  a  larger  religious 
freedom,  through  the  First  Baptist  church 
within  the  bounds  of  the  present  common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts."* 

This  silence  which  has  so  long  marked  the 
resting  place  of  this  lover  of  liberty,  this  father 
of  a  New  England  town,  this  founder  of  a 
church  in  the  wilderness,  this  pioneer  of  a  bet- 
ter civilization,  is  this  day  happily  broken,  and 

♦Thomas  W.  Bicknell.  in  "John  Myles  and  Religious 
Toleration  in  Massachusetts." 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  49 

a  suitable  monument  erected  to  his  memory  by 
the  hands  of  an  appreciative  and  thoughtful 
generosity. 

Of  the  descendants  of  Mr.  Myles  it  may  be 
said  that  his  son,  John,  Jr.,  lived  and  died  in 
Swansea,  serving  many  years  as  clerk  of  the 
town,  and  that  his  only  other  son,  Samuel, 
graduated  at  Cambridge  in  1684,  went  to  Eng- 
land and  continued  his  studies,  took  orders  in 
the  church  of  England,  and  returning  to  Amer- 
ica became  rector  of  King's  Chapel  in  Boston 
in  1689,  and  continued  in  that  office  until  his 
death  in  1728.  Several  later  descendants  de- 
voted their  property  and  lives  to  their  country 
in  the  war  of  the  American  Revolution.  Gen. 
Nelson  A.  Miles  of  our  time  has  by  his  emi- 
nent service  to  his  country  added  distinction  to 
the  name  of  his  great  ancestor. 

The  strong  personality  of  the  founder  of  a 
local  church  often  leaves  its  impress  on  the 
spiritual  body,  which  he  nourishes  into  being, 
and  fosters  during  the  period  of  its  infancy. 
Roger  Williams,  John  Clarke  and  John  Myles 
were  founders  of  churches,  which  have  lived 
until  now,  and  have  influenced  in  no  small 
measure  the  thought  and  life  of  their  commun- 


SQ  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

ities,  and  indeed  the  life  and  the  institutions  of 
the  whole  nation.  These  churches  were  plant- 
ed within  a  narrow  circle,  in  a  little  corner  of 
our  expanding  republic;  but  their  power  has 
reached  to  our  remotest  boundaries.  Indeed, 
it  may  be  said  without  exaggeration  "Their 
line  is  gone  out  throughout  all  the  earth,  and 
their  words  to  the  ends  of  the  earth." 

This  church  in  Swansea,  cradled  in  suffer- 
ing and  anointed  with  blood,  though  more  re- 
mote than  its  neighbors  from  the  tides  of  com- 
merce and  of  life,  has  maintained  a  prosperous 
spiritual  existence,  has  been  the  mother  of 
churches  larger  and  stronger  than  itself  (see 
Appendix  H),  and  has  filled  up  the  measure 
of  its  numerous  days  with  an  honorable  and 
beneficent  service,  whose  annals  no  human  pen 
can  adequately  record,  and  no  human  mind  can 
fully  comprehend. 

These  churches  of  Jesus  Christ,  little  or 
large,  rural  or  urban,  planted  in  the  new  com- 
munities of  a  growing  nation,  and  often  pre- 
sided over  by  university  trained  men,  have 
been  not  only  the  divinely  appointed  means  of 
extending  the  empire  of  him  who  said :  "Fear 
not  little  flock,  for  it   is    your  Father's  good 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  5^ 

pleasure  to  give  you  the  kingdom,"  but  they 
have  been  the  mighty  agencies  for  the  dissemi- 
nation of  intelHgence  and  moraHty,  for  the  pro- 
duction of  social  and  civic  virtue,  and  for  the 
promotion  of  peace,  and  prosperity,  and  true 
freedom  among  the  people.  They  have  given 
to  men  new  and  higher  conceptions  of  national 
greatness  and  glory,  and  have  filled  with  an 
ever-increasing  beauty  and  spiritual  signifi- 
cance our  national  emblem,  which  waves  its 
bright  colors  on  every  breeze  from  ocean  to 
ocean,  the  pride,  the  joy  and  the  inspiration  of 
a  free,  virtuous  and  united  people,  an  emblem 
under  which  it  is  worth  while  to  live,  and  for 
which,  if  need  be,  it  is  worth  while  to  die,  an 
emblem  on  which  the  eyes  of  the  fathers,  who 
laid  in  tears  and  blood  the  foundations  of  our 
churches  and  of  our  Republic,  would  look  if 
they  could,  with  inexpressible  delight. 

"With  its  red  for  love. 

And  its  white  for  law. 
And  its  blue  for  the  hope 

That  our  fathers  saw 
Of  a  larger  liberty." 


APPENDIX  A. 

Covenant  adopted  by  the  constituent  mem- 
bers of  the  church. 

"Holy  Covenant." 

"Swansey  in  New  England.  A  true  copy  of 
the  Holy  Covenant  the  first  founders  of  Swan- 
sey  entered  into  at  the  first  beginning,  and  all 
the  members  thereof  for  divers  years. 

Whereas,  we  poor  creatures  are,  through  the 
exceeding  riches  of  God's  infinite  grace,  mer- 
cifully snatched  out  of  the  kingdom  of  dark- 
ness, and  by  his  infinite  power  translated  into 
the  kingdom  of  his  dear  Son,  there  to  be  par- 
takers with  all  the  saints  of  all  those  privi- 
leges which  Christ  by  the  shedding  of  his  prec- 
ious blood  hath  purchased  for  us,  and  that  we 
do  find  our  souls  in  some  good  measure 
wrought  on  by  divine  grace  to  desire  to  be 
conformable  to  Christ  in  all  things,  being  also 
constrained  by  the  matchless  love  and  won- 
derful distinguishing  mercies  that  we  abund- 
antly enjoy  from  his  most  free  grace  to  serve 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  53 

him  according  to  our  utmost  capacities,  and 
that  we  also  know  that  it  is  our  most  bounden 
duty  to  walk  in  visible  communion  with  Christ 
and  each  other  according  to  the  prescript  rule 
of  his  most  Holy  Word,  and  also  that  it  is  our 
undoubted  right  through  Christ  to  enjoy  all 
the  privileges  of  God's  house  which  our  souls 
for  a  long  time  panted  after,  and  finding  no 
other  way  at  present  by  the  all-working  provi- 
dence of  our  only  wise  God  and  gracious 
Father  to  us  opened  for  the  enjoying  of  the 
same,  we  do  therefore,  after  often  and  sol-, 
emn  seeking  to  the  Lord  for  help  and  direc-' 
tion  in  the  fear  of  his  holy  name,  and  with 
hands  lifted  up  to  Him,  the  most  High  God, 
humbly  and  freely  offer  up  ourselves  this  day 
a  living  sacrifice  unto  Him,  who  is  our  God  in 
covenant  through  Christ  our  Lord  and  only 
Saviour,  to  walk  together  according  to  his  re- 
vealed Word  in  the  visible  gospel  relation  both 
to  Christ,  our  only  Head,  and  to  each  other  as 
fellow-members  and  brethren  of  the  same 
household  of  faith.  And  we  do  humbly  pray 
that  through  his  strength  we  will  henceforth 
endeavor  to  perform  all  our  respective  duties 


54  REV.   JOHN  MYLES. 

towards  God  and  each  other,  and  to  practice  all 
the  ordinances  of  Christ  according  to  what  is 
or  shall  be  revealed  to  us  in  our  respective 
place,  to  exercise,  practice  and  submit  to  the 
government  of  Christ  in  this  his  church,  viz. : 
further  protesting  against  all  rending  or  di- 
viding principles  or  practices  from  any  of  the 
people  of  God  as  being  most  abominable  and 
loathsome  to  our  souls  and  utterly  inconsist- 
ent with  that  Christian  charity  which  declares 
men  to  be  Christ's  disciples.  Indeed,  further 
declaring  in  that  as  union  in  Christ  is  the  sole 
ground  of  our  communion,  each  with  other, 
so  we  are  ready  to  accept  of,  receive  to  and 
hold  communion  with  all  such  by  judgment 
of  charity  we  conceive  to  be  fellow-members 
with  us  in  our  Head,  Christ  Jesus,  though  dif- 
fering from  us  in  such  controversial  points  as 
are  not  absolutely  and  essentially  necessary  to 
salvation.  We  also  hope  that  though  of  our- 
selves we  are  altogether  unworthy  and  unfit 
thus  to  offer  up  ourselves  to  God  or  to  do  Him 
a,  or  to  expect  any  favor  with,  or  mercy  from 
Him,  He  will  graciously  accept  of  this  our 
freewill    offering  in  and    through  the    merit 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  55 

and  mediation  of  our  dear  Redeemer,  and  that 
he  will  employ  and  improve  us  in  this  service 
to  his  praise,  to  whom  be  all  glory,  honor,  now 
and  forever.    Amen. 

The  names  of  the  persons  that  first  joined  Su)  ^  ' 
themselves  in  the  covenant  aforesaid  as  a  liy^C 
church  of  Christ, 

John  Myles,  Elder, 

James  Brown, 

Nicholas  Tanner, 

Joseph  Carpenter, 

John  Butterworth, 

Eldad  Kingsley/ 

Benjamin  Alby.'' 


APPENDIX  B. 

Grant  of  New  Swansea. 
"Whereas,  Liberty  hath  been  formerly 
granted  by  the  Court  for  the  jurisdiction  of 
New  Plymouth,  unto  Captain  Thomas  Willett 
and  his  neighbors  of  Wannamoisett,  to  become 
a  township  there  if  they  should  see  good,  and 
that  lately  the  said  Capt.  Willett  and  Mr. 
Myles  and  others  their  neighbors  have  re- 
quested of  the  Court  that  they  may  become  a 
township  there  or  near  thereabout,  and  like- 
wise to  have  granted  unto  them  such  parcels 
of  land  as  might  be  accommodating  thereunto, 
not  disposed  of  to  other  townships ;  this  Court 
have  granted  unto  them  all  such  lands  that  ly- 
eth  between  the  salt  water  bay  and  coming  up 
Taunton  river,  viz. :  all  the  land  between  the 
salt  water  and  river,  and  the  bounds  of  Taun- 
ton and  Rehoboth  not  prejudicing  any  man's 
particular  interest;  and  for  as  much  as  Reho- 
both hath  meadow  land  within  the  line  of 
Wannamoisett,  and  Wannamoisett  hath  lands 
within  of  Rehoboth,  lying  near  the  south  line 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  57 

of  Rehoboth;  if  the  two  townships  cannot 
agree  about  them  amongst  themselves,  the 
Court  reserves  it  within  their  power  to  deter- 
mine any  such  controversy. 

1667,  March.  The  Court  have  appointed 
Capt.  Thomas  Willett,  Mr.  Paine,  Senior,  Mr. 
Browne,  John  Allen,  and  John  Butterworth, 
to  have  the  trust  of  admittance  of  town  in- 
habitants into  the  said  town,  and  to  have  the 
disposal  of  the  land  therein,  and  ordering  the 
other  affairs  of  said  town. 

The  Court  do  allow  and  approve  that  the 
township  granted  unto  Capt.  Thomas  Willett 
and  others  his  neighbors  at  Wannamoisett  and 
parts  adjacent,  shall  henceforth  be  called  and 
known  by  the  name  of  Swansey." 


APPENDIX  C. 

Reply  of  the  Church  to  the  Propositions  of 
Capt.  Thomas  Willett. 

"Whereas,  Capt.  Thomas  Willett  shortly 
after  the  grant  of  this  township,  made  the  fol- 
lowing proposals  unto  those  who  were  with 
him,  and  by  the  Court  at  Plymouth  empowered 
for  the  admission  of  inhabitants  and  granting 
of  lots,  viz. : 

1.  That  no  erroneous  person  be  admitted 
into  the  township  either  as  an  inhabitant  or 
sojourner. 

2.  That  no  man  of  any  evil  behavior  as 
contentious  persons,  etc.,  be  admitted. 

3.  That  none  may  be  admitted  that  may 
become  a  charge  to  the  place. 

The  church  of  Christ  here  gathered  and 
assembling  did  thereupon  make  the  following 
address  unto  the  said  Capt.  Willett  and  his  as- 
sociates, the  trustees  aforesaid. 

(part  of  the  record  torn  off.) 
being  with  you  engaged  (according  to  our  ca- 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  59 

pacity)  in  the  carrying  on  of  a  township  ac- 
cording to  the  grant  given  us  by  the  honored 
Court,  and  desiring  to  lay  such  a  foundation 
thereof  as  may  effectually  tend  to  God's  glory, 
our  future  peace  and  comfort,  and  the  real 
benefit  of  such  as  shall  hereafter  join  with  us 
herein,  and  also  to  prevent  all  future  jealousies 
and  causes  of  dissatisfaction  or  disturbances 
in  so  good  a  work,  do  in  relation  to  the  three 
proposals  made  by  our  much  honored  Capt. 
Willett,  humbly  present  to  your  serious  con- 
sideration (before  we  further  proceed  therein) 
that  the  said  proposals  may  be  consented  to 
and  subscribed  by  all  and  every  townsman 
under  the  following  explications : 

That  the  first  proposal  relating  to  the  non- 
admission  of  erroneous  persons  may  be  only 
understood  under  the  explications  following, 
viz. :  of  such  damnable  heresies  inconsistent 
with  the  faith  of  the  gospel,  as  to  deny  the 
Trinity  or  any  person  there ;  the  Deity  or  sin- 
less humanity  of  Christ,  or  the.  union  of  both 
natures  in  him,  or  his  full  satisfaction  of  the 
divine  justice  by  his  active  and  passive  obe- 
dience for  all  his  elect,  or  his  resurrection,  as- 


60  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

cension  to  heaven,  intercession,  or  his  second 
personal  coming  to  judgment;  or  else  to  deny 
the  truth  or  divine  authority  of  any  part  of 
canonical  Scripture,  or  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  or  to  maintain  any  merit  of  works,  con- 
substantiation,  transubstantiation,  giving  di- 
vine adoration  to  any  creature,  or  any  other 
anti-Christian  doctrine,  thereby  directly  op- 
posing the  priestly,  prophetical  or  kingly  of- 
fice of  Christ,  or  any  part  thereof. 

Or  secondly,  of  such  as  hold  such  opinions 
as  are  inconsistent  with  the  well-being  of  the 
place,  as  to  deny  the  magistrate's  power  to 
punish  evil  doers  as  well  as  to  encourage  those 
that  do  well,  or  to  deny  the  first  day  of  the 
week  to  be  observed  by  divine  institution  as 
the  Lord's  or  Christian  Sabbath,  or  to  deny  the 
giving  of  honor  to  whom  honor  is  due,  or  to 
oppose  those  civil  respects  that  are  usually 
performed  according  to  the  laudable  custom  of 
our  nation  each  to  other  as  bowing  the  knee  or 
body,  etc. 

Or  else,  to  deny  the  office,  use,  or  authority 
of  the  ministry,  or  a  comfortable  maintenance 
to  be  due  to  them  from  such  as  partake  of  the 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  6l 

teaching,  or  to  speak  reproachfully  of  any  o£ 
the  churches  of  Christ  in  the  country,  or  of 
any  such  other  churches  as  are  of  the  same 
common  faith  with  us  and  them. 

We  desire  that  it  be  also  understood  and  de- 
clared, that  this  is  not  understood  of  any  hold- 
ing any  opinion  different  from  others  in  any 
disputable  point  yet  in  controversy  among  the 
godly  learned,  the  belief  thereof  being  not  es- 
sentially necessary  to  salvation  such  as  pedo- 
baptism,  anti-pedo-baptism,  church  discipline, 
or  the  like,  but  that  the  minister  or  ministers 
of  the  said  town  may  take  their  liberty  to  bap- 
tize infants  or  grown  persons  as  the  Lord 
shall  persuade  their  consciences,  and  so  also 
the  inhabitants  to  take  their  liberty  to  bring 
their  children  to  baptism  or  forbear. 

That  the  second  proposal  relating  to  the 
known  reception  of  any  evil  behavior  such  as 
contentious  persons,  etc.,  may  be  only  under- 
stood of  those  truly  so  called,  and  not  of  those 
who  are  different  in  judgment  in  the  particu- 
lars last  mentioned,  and  may  be  therefore 
accounted  contentious  by  some,  though  they 
are  in  all  fundamentals  of  faith  orthodox  in 


62  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

judgment,  and  excepting  common  infirmities, 
blameless  in  conversation. 

That  the  proposal  relating  to  the  non-ad- 
mission of  such  as  may  become  a  charge  to  the 
town,  be  only  understood  so  as  that  it  may  not 
hinder  any  godly  man  from  coming  among  us 
whilst  there  is  accommodation  that  may  sat- 
isfy him,  if  some  responsible  townsman  will  be 
bound  to  save  the  town  harmless. 

These  humble  tenders  of  our  desires,  we 
hope  you  will  without  offence  receive,  excus- 
ing us  herein,  considering  that  God's  glory, 
the  future  peace  and  well-being,  not  only  of  us 
and  of  our  posterity  who  shall  settle  here,  but 
also  of  those  several  good  and  peaceable- 
minded  men  whom  you  already  know  are  like, 
though  with  very  inconsiderable  outward  ac- 
commodation, to  come  amongst  us,  are  very 
much  concerned  herein;  our  humble  prayers 
both  for  ourselves  and  you  is  that  our  God 
would  be  pleased  to  cause  us  to  aim  more  and 
more  at  his  glory  and  less  at  our  own  earthly 
concernment,  that  so  we  may  improve  the 
favors  that  have  been  handed  to  us  by  our 
honored,  nursing  fathers,  to  the  advancement 


REV.   JOHN  MYLES.  6$ 

of  the  glory  of  God,  the  interest  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  and  to  the  common  benefit,  both 
of  the  township  and  colony  where  He  hath  pro- 
videntially disposed  of  us  to  serve  our  genera- 
tion. 

Your  brethren  to  serve  you  in  Christ.  Sign- 
ed on  the  behalf  and  in  the  name  of  the 
church  meeting  at  Swansey,  by 

John  Myles,  Pastor, 
John  Butterwqrth/' 


APPENDIX  D. 

Action  of  the  town  upon  the  propositions  of 
Capt.  Willett,  containing  undoubtedly  a  com- 
plete list  of  the  inhabitants,  including  the 
members  of  the  church. 

"The  foregoing  proposals  being  according 
to  the  desire  of  the  church  aforesaid,  fully  and 
absolutely  condescended  to,  concluded  and 
agreed  upon  by  and  between  the  said  Capt. 
Thomas  Willett  and  his  associates  aforesaid 
and  the  said  church,  under  the  reservation  and 
explications  above  written,  and  every  of  them,, 
it  was  sometime  afterward  propounded  at  a 
meeting  of  the  said  town,  lawfully  warned  on 
the  two  and  twentieth  day  of  the  twelfth 
month,  1669,  that  the  said  agreement  might  be 
by  the  whole  town  ratified  and  confirmed,  and 
settled  as  a  foundation  order  to  which  all  that 
then  were,  or  afterwards  should  be  admitted- 
inhabitants,  and  to  receive  lands  from  the 
town,  should  manifest  their  assent  by  subscript 
tion  thereunto,  whereupon  the  following  order 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  6$ 

(the  said  Capt.  Willett  and  his  associates 
aforesaid  being  present),  was  freely  passed  by 
the  whole  town,  nemine  contradicente. 

At  a  town  meeting  lawfully  warned  on  the 
two  and  twentieth  day  of  the  twelfth  month, 
commonly  called  February,  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1669,  it  is  ordered  that  all  persons  that 
are  or  shall  be  admitted  inhabitants  within  this 
town,  shall  subscribe  to  the  three  proposals 
above  written;  to  the  several  conditions  and 
explanations  therein  expressed,  before  any  lot 
of  land  be  confirmed  to  them  or  to  any  of  them. 

We  whose  names  are  here  underwritten,  do 
freely  upon  our  admission  to  be  inhabitants  of 
this  town  of  Swansey,  assent  to  the  above 
written  agreement,  made  between  the  church 
of  Christ  now  meeting  here  at  Swansey,  and 
Capt.  Thomas  Willett  and  his  associates;  as 
the  said  agreement  is  specified  and  declared  in 
the  three  proposals  aforewritten,  with  the  sev- 
eral conditions  and  explanations  thereof,  con- 
cerning the  present  and  future  settlement  of 
this  township.  In  witness  whereof,  we  have 
hereunto  subscribed : 

Thomas  Willett,  John  Myles,  John  Allen, 


66  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

James  Browne,  Nicholas  Tanner,  Hugh  Cole, 
Benjamin  Alby,  John  Browne,  Samuel 
Wheaton,  Thomas  Barnes,  Thomas  Easter- 
brooke,  Richard  Sharp,  William  Ingraham, 
Thomas  Manning,  William  Cahoone,  George 
Aldrich,  Nathaniel  Lewis,  John  Thurber, 
Jonathan  Bosworth,  Joseph  Lewis,  William 
Haywood,  John  Thurber,  Gerard  Ingraham, 
Zachariah  Eddy,  Hezekiah  Luther,  John  Pad- 
dock, Samuel  Luther,  Caleb  Eddy,  John  Myles, 
Jr.,  Thomas  Lewis,  Joseph  Carpenter,  Robert 
Jones,  Eldad  Kingsley,  John  Martin,  John 
Cole,  Joseph  Wheaton,  Nathaniel  Paine, 
Stephen  Brace,  Gideon  Allen,  John  Dickse, 
William  Bartram,  Joseph  Kent,  Samuel  Wood- 
bury, Nehemiah  Allen,  Sampson  Mason,  Job 
Winslow,  Obadiah  Bowen,  Jr.,  Richard  Bur- 
ges,  John  Butterworth,  John  West,  Thomas 
Elliot,  Timothy  Brooks,  Nathaniel  Toogood, 
Jeremiah  Child,  Obadiah  Bowen,  Sr." 


APPENDIX  E. 

Remarkable  division  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Swansea  into  three  ranks  according  to  their 
character  and  influence. 

Under  date  of  February  7,  1670,  the  follow- 
ing order  was  passed : 

"That  all  lots  and  divisions  of  land  that  are 
or  hereafter  shall  be  granted  to  any  particular 
person,  shall  be  proportioned  according  to  the 
three  ranks  and  written  so,  that  where  those  of 
the  first  rank  shall  have  three  acres,  those  of 
the  second  rank  shall  have  two  acres,  and  those 
of  the  third  rank  shall  have  one  acre,  and  that 
it  shall  be  in  the  power  of  the  selectmen  for 
the  time  being,  or  committee  for  admission  of 
inhabitants,  to  admit  of  and  place  such  as  shall 
be  received  as  inhabitants  into  either  of  the 
said  ranks  as  they  shall  judge  fit,  till  the  full 
number  of  threescore  such  inhabitants  shall 
be  made  up,  and  that  when  the  said  number  of 
threescore  is  accomplished,  the  lands  that  are 
already  bought  shall  be  divided  and  propor- 


68  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

tioned  according  to  the  said  three- fold  ranks ; 
that  in  the  meantime,  the  said  selectmen  or 
committee  shall  have  full  power  to  grant  lots 
unto  such  persons  as  may  not  be  placed  into 
any  of  the  said  ranks,  until  further  order  pro- 
vides; the  grants  not  to  exceed  nine  acres  to 
a  man." 

Then  follow  three  columns  of  names,  num- 
bering, however,  only  forty-eight  in  all,  divid- 
ed as  follows :  nine  in  the  first  column, 
twenty-three  in  the  second  column,  and  six- 
teen in  the  third  column.  'A  pastor's  lot'  and 
'a  teacher's  lot'  are  placed  in  the  first  column, 
and  'a  schoolmaster's'  in  the  second. 

The  record  given  above  is  as  found  in  Bay- 
lies' 'History  of  New  Plymouth.'  What  the 
basis  of  division  was  does  not  appear.  Of  the 
seven  constituent  members  of  the  Baptist 
church,  three  are  found  in  the  first  column, 
viz. :  Mr.  John  Myles,  pastor,  James  Browne, 
and  John  Butterworth,  three  are  found  in  the 
second  column,  viz. :  Nicholas  Tanner,  Benja- 
min Alby  and  Joseph  Carpenter,  and  Eldad 
Kinsley  appears  in  the  third  column. 

On  February  12,  1670,  "to  prevent  the  bring- 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  69 

ing  in  of  such  persons  to  be  inhabitants  as  may 
be  to  the  prejudice  of  the  town,  it  was  ordered 
that  whosoever  hath  taken  or  shall  take  up  any 
lot  therein  and  shall  let  out,  give,  or  sell  the 
same,  or  any  part  thereof,  to  any  person  or 
persons  whatever,  without  the  consent  of  the 
town  or  at  least  of  the  committee  that  are  or 
shall  be  chosen  for  the  management  of  the 
prudential  affairs  of  the  town  at  any  time 
hereafter;  then  the  person  or  persons  that 
shall  so  let  out,  give,  or  sell  as  aforesaid,  shall 
forfeit  their  whole  right  in  such  lot  and  build- 
ings thereon,  from  them,  their  heirs  and  as- 
signs, to  the  use  of  the  town  forever." 

This  certainly  looks  like  a  very  careful  over- 
sight of  the  character  of  the  inhabitants,  not 
to  say  a  rigid  and  despotic  restriction  of  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  freemen.  Baylies  com- 
menting on  this  condition  of  civil  affairs,  re- 
marks :  "This  division  of  the  people  into  ranks 
presents  a  remarkable  and  unique  feature  in 
town  history.  It  existed  nowhere  else  in  the 
colony;  fancy  can  almost  discern  in  this  ar- 
rangement the  rudiments  of  the  three  Roman 
orders.    Patrician,    Equestrian   and    Plebeian. 


70  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

This  power  was  assumed  by  the  five  persons 
appointed  by  the  Court  to  regulate  the  admis- 
sion of  town  inhabitants  in  1667,  and  after- 
wards was  exercised  by  committees  appointed 
by  the  town.  These  committees  seemed  to 
have  exercised  the  authority  of  censors,  and 
have  degraded  and  promoted  from  one  rank 
to  another  at  discretion." 

The  committee  for  the  admission  of  inhabi- 
tants in  1681  was  James  Brown,  Sr.,  John 
Allen,  Sr.,  and  John  Butterworth.  They 
granted  to  several  persons  of  the  first  class, 
their  heirs  and  assigns  forever,  "the  full  right 
and  intent  of  the  highest  rank,"  etc.  It  has 
been  well  said  by  Mr.  Bicknell  ("Historical 
Sketches,"  etc.,  p.  83).  "The  establishment 
of  ranks  had  already  created  a  landed  aristoc- 
racy; this  act  of  the  committee  proceeded  a 
step  further  and  made  the  rank  hereditary. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  town  began  to  under- 
stand the  tendency  of  their  extraordinary  rules 
on  this  subject.  Although  great  dissatisfac- 
tion had  been  caused  by  the  several  assign- 
ments of  ranks,  and  the  promotions  and  degra- 
dations from  one  rank  to  another,  they  had 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  71 

not  been  led  to  see  the  purely  undemocratic 
tendency  of  their  regulations,  until  the  fur- 
ther singular  action  of  the  committee  occa- 
sioned a  unanimous  protest  on  the  part  of  the 
town,  and  a  declaration  that  the  act  was  ut- 
terly void  and  of  no  effect.  From  this  time 
the  ranking  system  was  wholly  neglected,  and 
this  element  of  feudal  tyranny  enjoyed  but  a 
short  life  in  our  old  town." 

This  unique  and  unparalleled  condition  of 
things  which  was  an  anachronism  and  an 
anomaly  in  a  Pilgrim  community,  survived 
only  eleven  years.  The  wonder  is  that  it  was 
ever  created. 


APPENDIX  F. 

Letter  from  Thomas  HoUis  of  London: 
Rev.  Ephraim  Wheaton,  the  third  pastor  of 
the  church,  was  associate  pastor  with  Rev. 
Samuel  Luther  from  1704  to  17 16,  and  on  the 
death  of  Mr.  Luther  was  sole  pastor  until  his 
own  death,  April  26,  1734.  His  ministry  was 
greatly  blessed  to  the  strengthening  and  en- 
largement of  the  church.  About  the  year  1721 
fifty  persons  were  baptized  and  added  to  the 
church.  The  pastor  sent  an  account  of  this 
revival  to  Mr.  Thomas  Hollis,  an  eminent 
Baptist  merchant  in  London,  who  gave  to  Har- 
vard University  to  found  Hollis  professorships 
and  scholarships  a  sum  now  estimated  at  $46,- 
671.00.  This  was  the  largest  single  gift  which 
the  University  had  received  at  that  time,  and 
was  a  generous  provision  for  the  education  of 
young  men  for  the  Baptist  ministry.  The  let- 
ter called  forth  the  following  reply  from  Mr. 
Hollis,  which  has  been  preserved  in  the  records 
of  the  church.  It  was  accompanied  with  a  gift 
of  books  to  Mr.  Wheaton. 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  73 

"London,  March  13,  1722-3. 
Dear  Sir — I  rejoice  in  the  success  of  your 
ministry  and  increase  of  your  church,  which 
will  naturally  increase  your  cares  and  your 
joy.  I  mourn  because  of  the  ignorance  of  your 
sleeping  Sabbatarians.  Let  us  be  thankful  for 
our  light,  pity  them,  pray  for  them,  and  en- 
deavor in  love  to  lead  them  into  the  light. 
God,  that  hath  shined  into  our  hearts  by  his 
gospel,  can  lead  them  from  Sinai's  covenant 
and  the  law  of  ceremonies  into  the  liberty  of 
the  new  covenant  and  the  grace  thereof.  I 
pity  to  see  professors  drawing  back  to  the 
law,  and  I  desire  to  remember  our  standing  is 
by  grace ;  therefore  not  to  be  high-minded  over 
them,  but  fear,  remembering  our  Lord's  words, 
Vatch  and  pray  lest  ye  enter  into  temptation.' 
Every  word  of  God  is  precious.  The  saints 
love  it,  and  they  that  honor  Him,  He  will 
honor,  and  in  keeping  of  it  there  is  present 
peace  and  a  promise  of  future  reward.  We 
now  live  by  faith  and  not  by  sight.  He  that 
endureth  to  the  end  shall  be  saved.  Go  on 
sowing  the  seed,  looking  up  to  Him  whose 
work  it  is,    whoever   be    the    planter  or  the 


74  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

waterer ;  and  as  you  abound  in  your  labors  and 
find  Him  multiplying  seed  unto  you,  may  you 
yet  abound  more  and  more,  is  my  sincere  wish. 
Let  no  man  rob  us  of  our  comfortable  hope 
that  when  we  cease  to  be  here  we  shall  be  pres- 
ent with  the  Lord,  in  whose  presence,  the  saint 
believes,  is  fullness  of  joy,  in  a  separate  state, 
and  an  expectation  of  greater  in  the  resurrec- 
tion, when  it  shall  be  manifested  how  He  loved 
them.  Let  none  jeer  us  out  of  our  duty  now 
to  lisp  forth  His  praise,  since  hereafter  we  ex- 
pect to  sing  in  a  better  manner  the  song  of 
the  Lamb  in  a  nobler  chorus. 

In  reference  to  your  poll  tax  and  other  taxes 
which  are  necessary  for  the  support  of  gov- 
ernment and  society,  they  are  not  to  be  esteem- 
ed a  burden.  'Tis  giving  tribute  of  tithes  to 
whom  tribute  is  due,  unless  the  taxes  oppress 
you  unequally  because  you  are  Baptists  and 
Separatists.  If  so,  then  let  me  know  (who 
profess  myself  a  Baptist) ,  and  I  will  endeavor 
to  have  a  word  spoken  for  you  to  the  Gover- 
nor, that  you  be  eased. 

You  know  that  your  profession  is  not  popu- 
lar in  your  country  or  ours,  few,  if  any  of  the 


REV.    JOHN    MYLES.  75 

great  men  submitting  to  a  plain  institution. 
And  as  we  profess  ourselves  the  disciples  of 
Christ,  'tis  our  duty  to  take  up  'our  cross'  with 
patience,  and  pay  parochial  duty  where  we 
live,  and  voluntarily  to  maintain  our  own 
charges,  thankful  for  our  liberty  as  men  and 
Christians,  to  our  good  God,  who  in  His  provi- 
dence, has  inspired  many  magistrates  and  min- 
isters in  your  provinces  with  a  truer  spirit  of 
Catholic  charity  than  formerly. 

You  have  heard,  or  may  be  informed  by  Mr. 
Callender,  of  my  founding  in  Harvard  Col- 
lege, and  the  provision  I  have  made  for  Bap- 
tist youths  to  be  educated  for  the  ministry  and 
equally  regarded  with  Pedo-Baptists.  If  you 
know  any  duly  qualified  inform  me,  and  I 
shall  be  glad  to  recommend  them  for  the  first 
vacancy.  And  to  close:  while  we  profess  to 
worship  God  nearer  to  the  rule  of  primitive 
institution  and  practice  of  our  great  Prophet 
and  Teacher,  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  his 
Apostles,  let  our  light  so  shine  before  men,  in 
all  holy  conversation,  that  such  as  may  be  ready 
to  speak  evil  of  our  way  be  ashamed.  May 
serious  religion  and  godliness,  in  the  power  of 


^d  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

it,  flourish  among  you,  and  everything  that 
goes  in  to  make  a  true  Christian.  Where  the 
true  image  of  Christ  is  found  in  any  I  call 
them  the  excellent  of  the  earth.  With  such  I 
delight  to  associate  and  worship,  whatever  de- 
nomination they  may  go  by  among  men,  and 
this  I  would  do  till  we  all  come  into  the  unity 
of  the  spirit,  etc.  And  now,  dear  sir,  I  com- 
mend you  to  God  and  to  the  word  of  His 
grace,  etc.    Acts  xx:32. 

Your  loving  friend, 

Thos.  Hollis. 
To  Mr.  Ephraim  Wheaton, 

Minister  in  Swansea,  New  England." 
This  letter  is  interesting  not  only  as  reveal- 
ing the  devout,  catholic,  truth-loving,  peace- 
loving  spirit  of  the  author,  and  his  generous 
sympathy  for  his  American  brethren,  but  also 
as  bearing  witness  to  the  presence  of  Sabba- 
tarians in  Swansea  at  that  time,  and, to  the 
existence  of  some  sort  of  oppressive  legisla- 
tion against  the  Baptists,  which  they  were  ex- 
horted to  bear  patiently  until  it  was  unendur- 
able. In  that  case  Mr.  Hollis  would  intercede 
with  the  Governor  of  the  colony  in  their  be- 
half. 


APPENDIX  G. 

The  attempt  to  found  a  Baptist  church  at 
Weymouth  and  its  author. 

In  1639  ^^  attempt  was  made  at  Weymouth 
to  organize  a  Baptist  church,  which  was  ren- 
dered unsuccessful  by  the  opposition  of  the 
Magistrates.  This  attempt  was  the  result,  it 
has  been  said,  of  the  visit  "of  Hanserd  KnoUys, 
a  Baptist  preacher  from  London,  who  went 
through  the  Plymouth  towns  publishing  his 
sentiments  in  1638."  The  authority  for  this 
statement  is  Hon.  John  W.  Davis,  ex-Governor 
of  Rhode  Island,  in  an  address  at  the  250th  an- 
niversary of  the  settlement  of  Rehoboth.  The 
impression  which  it  makes  is  that  Knollys  was 
a  Baptist  at  that  time.  This  is  the  view  also 
found  in  Cathcart's  Baptist  Encyclopaedia. 
The  evidence  is  against  its  correctness.  Han- 
serd Knollys  was  born  in  Cawkwell,  Lincoln- 
shire, England,  in  1598,  and  probably  grad- 
uated at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  He 
was  ordained  as  a  Presbyter  in  the  Church  of 
England,  and  held  the  living  at  Humberstone 


yS  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

two  or  three  years,  resigning  it  because  he  had 
scruples  as  to  "the  lawfulness  of  using  the 
surplice,  the  cross  in  baptism,  and  the  admis- 
sion of  persons  of  profane  character  to  the 
Lord's  Supper."  He  came  out  openly  as  a 
Puritan  about  1636.  After  suffering  imprison- 
ment and  other  forms  of  persecution  he  sought 
refuge  in  New  England,  arriving  in  Boston  in 
July,  1638.  He  was  not  altogether  welcome, 
being  immediately  suspected  of  antinomianism. 
Upon  invitation  he  went  to  Piscataqua,  Maine 
(now  Dover,  N.  H.),  and  organized  there  the 
First  Church  which  was  of  the  Puritan  order. 
(See  Winthrop's  History  of  New  England  I, 
392).  His  mind  was  in  a  transition  state.  He 
was  becoming  more  and  more  an  advanced 
Separatist.  Owing  to  growing  differences  of 
opinion  with  his  associate  and  some  of  the 
people,  and  some  charges  against  his  personal 
character,  he  returned  to  Boston.  (For  a  can- 
did discussion  of  the  nature  of  those  charges, 
and  their  probable  baselessness,  see  sketch  of 
Knollys  in  Sprague's  Annals  of  the  American 
Baptist  Pulpit).  Intending  at  first  to  settle 
elsewhere  in  the  new  world,  he  abandoned  his 


REV.    JOHN   MYLES.  79 

purpose  at  the  urgent  entreaty  of  his  aged 
father  and  returned  to  England  in  December, 
1641. 

Sometime  during  this  visit  of  less  than  three 
years  he  must  have  preached  in  Plymouth 
colony,  and  infected  others  with  his  changing 
views,  which  after  his  departure  ripened  into 
Baptist  convictions.  He  was  at  that  time 
charged  with  ana-baptism  (see  N.  H.  Provin- 
cial Papers  I,  120,  123,  also  Belknap's  New 
Hampshire  I,  44),  as  was  Roger  Williams 
soon  after  his  arrival  in  this  country.  It  was 
after  his  return  to  England  that  KnoUys  be- 
came a  Baptist  and  identified  himself  with  that 
denomination.  Persecution  again  overtook 
him.  He  was  fined,  stoned  and  imprisoned. 
His  labors  were  abundant.  He  was  a  success- 
ful teacher  and  industrious  author.  He  was 
master  of  several  languages.  He  was  pastor 
of  a  congregation  of  a  thousand  persons.  He 
was  a  chaplain  in  the  army,  and  at  one  time  a 
fugitive  on  the  continent.  He  was  acknowl- 
edged on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  by  those 
who  did  not  hold  his  views  as  well  as  by  those 
who  did,  to  be  "a  godly  man"  and  "a  learned 


80  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

scholar."  He  was  one  of  the  leading  men  of 
his  denomination.  He  died  in  London  in  1691 
at  the  age  of  ninety-three.  The  Baptists  in 
England  in  1845  organized  a  Publication  So- 
ciety to  which  they  gave  his  name.  (See  Me- 
morial Address  of  Rev.  A.  H.  Quint,  D.  D., 
at  250th  Anniversary  of  the  First  Parish  in 
Dover,  N.  H.) 


APPENDIX  H. 

New  Churches  and  Early  Pastors. 

The  following  churches  have  been  formed 
from  the  Swansea  church;  Oak  Swamp  or- 
ganized in  1732,  of  which  Rev.  John  Comer 
was  pastor;  Bellingham  in  1736;  Oswego,  N. 
Y.,  in  1759,  to  which  place  a  colony  removed; 
Warren,  R.  I.,  in  1764,  and  Seekonk,  now 
First  East  Providence,  in  1794.  According  to 
Bliss  "no  less  than  seven  Baptist  churches 
were  formed  in  Rehoboth."  Backus  speaks 
of  ten  churches  as  having  been  organized 
there,  representing  different  phases  of  belief, 
but  substantially  Baptist  churches,  some  of 
which  became  extinct.  Those  were  days  of 
independent  thinking  and  of  extreme  con- 
scientiousness, when  it  did  not  require  a  great 
difference  of  opinion  to  split  a  church,  and 
create  a  new  denomination.  And  yet  the 
cause  prospered  and  many  followers  were  won. 
Benedict  says  "Truly  may  old  Rehoboth  claim 
to  have  done  much  for  the  Baptist  cause ;  and 
if  all  the  members  who  have  emigrated  to  other 


82  REV.    JOHN   MYLES. 

parts,  or  have  lived  and  died  within  its  bounds, 
if  all  the  ministers  who  have  been  born  in  this 
extensive  domain,  or  who  have  officiated  in  its 
bounds  in  connection  with  the  various 
churches  and  interests  of  the  Baptists  could  be 
enrolled  in  one  list,  it  would  not  be  small." 
Asplund  mentions  ten  Baptist  churches  in  Re- 
hoboth  and  Swansea  in  1790 — two  called  Reg- 
ular, three  Six  Principle,  one  of  which  had  a 
plurality  of  elders,  of  whom  one  was  called  a 
"travelling"  elder,  two  Open  Communion,  and 
three  recorded  as  No  Communion.  Surely  the 
old  Swansea  church  was  the  prolific  mother  of 
churches.  It  is  claimed  that  twenty-seven 
churches  from  first  to  last  have  traced  their 
pedigree  to  her,  not  all  of  them  remaining  true 
to  type,  and  several  of  them  undoubtedly  hav- 
ing fought  a  good  fight  before  finishing  their 
course,  though  they  may  not  have  kept  the 
faith. 

After  Mr.  Myles'  decease  the  church  was 
presided  over  by  devoted  and  worthy  men.  In 
1685  Samuel  Luther  was  called  by  the  church 
to  succeed  Mr.  Myles,  with  the  concurrence  of 
the  voters  of  the  town,  and  continued  in  office 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  83 

until  17 17.  He  was  succeeded  by  Ephraim 
Wheaton,  who  had  been  his  colleague  for  thir- 
teen years,  and  remained  sole  pastor  until  his 
death  in  1734.  Samuel  Maxwell  and  Benja- 
min Harrington  served  the  church  for  brief 
periods.  In  175 1  Jabez  Wood  became  pastor, 
and  performed  the  duties  of  the  office  for 
thirty-two  years,  bringing  the  history  of  the 
church  down  to  near  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Of  Samuel  Luther,  the  second  pastor,  it  may 
be  said  that  he  was  one  of  the  first  settlers  of 
the  town  of  Swansea  and  was  probably  a 
Welsh  immigrant.  His  name  appears  in  the 
action  of  the  town  on  the  Willett  proposals. 
He  bore  the  name  of  "Captain."  During  his 
ministry  the  meeting  house  was  removed  to 
near  Myles'  Bridge.  He  is  said  to  have  been 
"a  man  of  character  and  talents,  and  to  have 
discharged  the  duties  of  his  office  with  exem- 
plary fidelity." 

Ephraim  Wheaton,  the  third  pastor,  was  a 
son  of  Robert  Wheaton,  one  of  the  Welsh  im- 
migrants, and  a  tanner  by  trade.  He  was  born 
in  1659,  and  was    therefore   a   child  of  four 


84  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

years  when  the  family  came  to  America. 
What  his  educational  advantages  were,  if  he 
had  any,  we  are  not  informed.  He  is  said  to 
have  "exerted  a  great  and  good  influence  on 
the  church  and  on  others  also.  His  ministry 
was  emimently  successful  and  the  church  was 
highly  prosperous."  Some  of  his  posterity  ac- 
quired distinction  in  their  professions.  A  great 
grandson,  Dr.  Levi  P.  Wheaton,  graduated 
from  R.  I.  College  (now  Brown  University) 
in  1778,  "served  in  a  military  hospital  in  Prov- 
idence, was  afterwards  surgeon  upon  an  armed 
privateer  and  being  taken  a  British  prisoner, 
was  put  in  charge  of  a  prison  ship  in  New 
York."  He  subsequently  lived  in  Providence, 
where  he  practiced  the  profession  of  medicine 
for  fifty  years  and  more,  being  a  learned  man 
and  an  able  physician.  Henry  Wheaton,  the 
distinguished  diplomatist  and  jurist,  was  a  de- 
scendant of  the  fourth  generation. 


APPENDIX  I. 

Was  the  Swansea  Church  a  Baptist 
Church  ? 

An  interesting  question  is  suggested  by  Mr. 
Bicknell  in  "Historical  Sketches  of  Barring- 
ton,"  p.  179,  viz. :  Was  the  church  founded  by 
Mr.  Myles  at  first  a  Baptist  church  ?  Even  the 
suggestion  of  a  doubt  on  this  point  will  occa- 
sion no  little  surprise,  for  it  is  opposed  to  the 
unvarying  belief  of  all  students  of  the  period. 
Mr.  Bicknell's  language  is  as  follows:  "The 
broad  and  catholic  basis  of  the  Baptist  church 
which  was  formed  on  New  Meadow  Neck  in 
1663,  and  which  maintained  its  worship  near 
Burial  Place  Hill  and  at  Tyler's  Point  until 
16 — ,  drew  to  its  fellowship  all  denominations 
of  Christians  in  the  community.  It  may  fairly 
be  questioned  whether  it  was  a  Baptist  church 
at  all,  save  in  name,  or  whether  Parson  Myles 
was  not  as  truly  a  Congregationalist  as  a  Bap- 
tist.    Certainly  the  old  church  covenant  and 


86  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

the  ordinances  as  administered  by  the  good 
elder  would  be  accepted  as  fair  Congregational 
doctrine  at  the  present  time,and  certain  it  was, 
too,  that  Parson  Luther  felt  the  need  of  mak- 
ing certain  amendments  to  that  noble  instru- 
ment of  conscience-liberty  and  Christian 
brotherhood,  in  order  that  he  might  be  able  to 
distinguish  and  separate  the  flock  of  the  true 
Baptist  fold." 

This  question  as  to  the  distinctive  character 
of  the  church  at  the  beginning  seems  to  be 
based  upon  its  catholicity  as  indicated  in  the 
original  covenant  of  the  church  and  in  the 
terms  of  the  acceptance  of  Mr.  Willett's  propo- 
sition, and  also  upon  the  supposed  attitude  of 
the  second  pastor,  Mr.  Luther,  who  is  thought 
to  have  been  a  stricter  constructionist  than 
Mr.  Myles  as  to  the  teachings  of  the  New 
Testament  and  the  Christian  ordinances. 
What  "supplementary  notes  to  the  original 
covenant,"  if  any,  "which  were  not  relished 
by  the  Congregational  element"  in  the  com- 
munity, Mr.  Luther  added,  we  may  not  be  able 
to  say ;  but  in  course  of  time  there  grew  to  be 
in  the  growing  town  which  was  increasing  by 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  8/ 

new  comers,  a  division  of  sentiment  on  several 
points.  The  settlements  of  the  town  were  re- 
mote from  each  other,  which  occasioned  a 
change  in  the  location  of  the  meeting  house  to 
the  inconvenience  of  some  of  the  people. 
When  Sir  William  Phipps  brought  the  charter 
which  absorbed  the  Plymouth  Colony  in  the 
Massachusetts  Bay,  a  new  order  of  things  un- 
der Puritan  jurisdiction  was  sought  to  be  in- 
troduced which  was  opposed  to  the  convic- 
tions of  most  of  the  people,  on  the  right  of  the 
civil  government  to  interfere  in  church  affairs, 
though  evidently  to  some  persons,  probably  the 
later  arrivals  who  were  not  sufficiently  en- 
lightened on  the  point  and  did  not  accept  the 
voluntary  system  in  religion,  the  new  order 
was  welcome.  These  with  other  things  led  to 
a  determination  to  secure  a  division  of  the 
town.  This  effort  Mr.  Luther  and  a  large  ma- 
jority of  the  citizens  opposed,  believing  it  to 
be  unwise  and  unnecessary.  Mr.  Luther's 
name  heads  the  protest,  and  very  likely  he  was 
active  in  his  opposition.  At  any  rate  his  min- 
istry was  no  longer  acceptable  to  the  "new 
comers,"  who  sent  petition  after  petition  for 


88  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

the  division  of  the  town  to  Governor  Joseph 
Dudley  and  the  Massachusetts  Court,  saying 
"we  being  well  assured  of  this  honorable  Gen- 
eral Court's  power  and  good  will  to  help  in 
such  cases,  from  their  repeated  acts  of  like 
nature,  do  the  more  freely  open  our  malady 
which  bespeaks  pity  and  cure."  These  words 
are  taken  from  the  first  petition  which  was  sent 
in  171 1,  in  which  they  go  so  far  as  to  say  we 
have  "no  settled  minister  learned  and  ortho- 
dox, no  church  of  Christ  settled  in  order,  no 
pastor  to  feed  Christ's  lambs  among  us."  They 
had  evidently  completely  withdrawn  from  Mr. 
Luther's  ministry  at  that  time,  if  they  had  ever 
been  under  it. 

The  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions  had  pre- 
viously issued  a  warrant  requiring  the  town  to 
choose  a  minister  according  to  law,  that  is,  ac- 
cording to  the  prescribed  "orthodox"  method, 
Puritan  Massachusetts  seeking  to  dictate  to 
the  town,  and  enforce  upon  it  the  support  of 
church  and  minister  by  public  tax.  To  this 
warrant  they  replied  after  much  warm  debate : 
"They  had  a  minister  that  they  apprehended 
was  according  to  law,  viz. :  the  Elder  Samuel 


REV.    JOHN    MYLES.  89 

Luther,  and  desired  the  vote  of  the  town  to 
see  their  assent  and  approbation." 

The  third  attempt  to  secure  the  division  of 
the  town  was  successful,  and  the  petition  was 
granted  by  an  order  of  the  Massachusetts 
Court  November  i8,  1717-  Some  time  between 
171 1  and  1717  a  Congregational  church  was 
formed  with  Rev.  James  Wilson  as  pastor,  and 
immediately  upon  the  creation  of  the  new 
township  it  undertook  the  minister's  support 
in  the  Puritan  "orthodox"  way.  This  method 
the  town  discontinued  in  1746,  soon  after  Bar- 
rington  (the  name  by  which  it  was  called) 
passed  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Rhode  Island, 
and  breathed  the  freer  atmosphere  of  unre- 
stricted religious  liberty. 

It  looks  very  much  as  if  the  changed  condi- 
tions in  the  town  were  brought  about  quite  as 
much  by  the  introduction  of  a  new  element 
under  the  liberal  conditions  of  citizenship  in 
favor  of  pedo-Baptists  as  by  any  change  in 
the  views  and  practices  of  the  Baptist  church. 
At  any  rate  there  appears  to  be  no  sufficient 
evidence  that  Mr.  Myles  and  his  companions 
were  not  Baptists  from  the  beginning.     That 


90  REV.   JOHN   MYLES. 

they  were  "liberal,"  to  use  the  word  in  the 
customary  acceptation,  is  evident  from  both 
the  covenant  and  the  terms  of  agreement  as  to 
the  conditions  of  citizenship,  that  is,  liberal 
towards  the  Congregationalists,  but  decidedly 
not  so  towards  those  of  other  religious  faiths, 
which  denied  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  the 
Deity  of  Christ,  the  atonement,  the  authority 
of  the  Scriptures  and  many  other  specified 
doctrines. 

The  covenant  declares  that  "they  would 
walk  together  according  to  his  revealed  word 
*  *  *  *  as  brethren  of  the  same  house- 
hold of  faith  *  *  *  *  and  that  as 
union  with  Christ  is  the  sole  ground  of  our 
communion  each  with  other,  we  are  ready  to 
accept  of,  receive  to  and  hold  communion  with 
all  such  by  judgment  of  charity  we  conceive 
to  be  fellow-members  with  us  in  our  Head, 
Christ  Jesus."  These  words  evidently  express 
their  terms  of  communion  in  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per. They  were  open  communionists,  as  were 
many  Baptists  in  those  days  and  as  are  some 
at  the  present  time.  There  is  no  intimation 
that  they  practiced  any  other  baptism  than 
their  name  implies. 


REV.   JOHN  MYLES.  9 1 

In  the  articles  of  agreement  as  to  the  condi- 
tions of  citizenship  they  grant  full  liberty  to  all 
who  may  come  among  them  to  administer  and 
receive  such  form  of  baptism  as  they  think 
right  and  according  to  their  interpretation  of 
the  Scriptures.  "The  minister  or  ministers  of 
the  said  town  may  take  their  liberty  to  baptize 
infants  or  grown  persons  as  the  Lord  shall 
persuade  their  consciences,  and  so  also  the  in- 
habitants to  take  their  liberty  to  bring  their 
children  to  baptism  or  forbear."  A  fair  inter- 
pretation of  these  words  is  that  they  granted 
to  others  the  same  rights  and  liberties  that 
they  claimed  for  themselves.  They  did  not 
expect  it  would  always  remain  exclusively  a 
Baptist  town.  Indeed  it  was  not  such  then. 
They  were  speaking  of  the  terms  of  citizenship, 
and  not  of  the  terms  of  church  membership. 
There  is  no  intimation  that  for  themselves  they 
accepted  or  offered  any  baptism  but  that  which 
they  believed  Christ  enjoined  and  his  apostles 
practiced.  This  is  the  very  essense  of  true 
liberalism,  not  the  surrender  of  one's  own  hon- 
est conviction,  but  the  granting  to  others  the 
same  liberty  of  conscience  and  of  conduct  that 
is  claimed. 


92  REV.  JOHN   MYLES. 

A  reference  to  the  covenant  of  the  old 
Swansea  church  will  prove  beyond  a  question 
the  belief  and  practice  of  Mr.  Myles  and  his 
companions  in  the  matter  of  baptism.  ''We 
cannot  but  admire  at  the  unsearchable  wis- 
dom, power  and  love  of  God,  in  bringing  about 
his  own  designs,  far  above  and  beyond  the  ca- 
pacity and  understanding  of  the  wisest  of  men. 
Thus,  to  the  glory  of  his  own  great  name  hath 
He  dealt  with  us ;  for  when  there  had  been 
no  company  or  society  of  people  holding  forth 
and  professing  the  doctrine,  worship,  order 
and  discipline  of  the  gospel,  according  to  the 
primitive  institution,  that  ever  we  heard  of  in 
all  Wales,  since  the  apostacy,  it  pleased  the 
Lord  to  choose  this  dark  corner  to  place  His 
name  in  and  honor  us,  undeserving  creatures, 
with  the  happiness  of  being  the  first  in  all 
these  parts,  among  whom  was  practiced  the 
glorious  ordinance  of  baptism,  and  here  to 
gather  the  first  church  of  baptized  believers." 


APPENDIX  J. 

Swansea  Song  and  Dedicatory  Address. 

SWANSEA  SONG. 

Written  by  Hezekiah  Butterworth. 

"Freedom,  God  and  Right!" 

The  old  Welsh  Swansea  Motto,  usually  sung 

to  the  ancient  tune  of  "Men  of  Harlech  in  the 

Hollow." 

I. 
"Men  of  Harlech  in  the  hollow, 
Men  of  Swansea  on  the  billow, 
Men  who  made  the  pines  their  pillo*w, 

'Neath  the  snow  sheets  white. 
Men  of  faith  who  never  doubted. 
Men  whose  banners  ne'er  were  routed, 
Loud  the  cry  of  Wales  they  shouted — 
'Freedom,  God  and  Right!' 

Chorus. 
Men  of  Swansea  glorious. 
O'er  each  wrong  victorious, 
Still,  still  the  air  bright  and  fair 
Shall  spread  your  motto  o'er  us ! 


94  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

Onward  then  like  Cambrian  yeomen, 
Cambrian  spearmen,  Cambrian  bowmen. 
With  the  motto  'gainst  each  foeman — 
'Freedom,  God  and  Right !' 

11. 
Green  the  groves  that  rose  to  meet  them, 
Strong  the  oaks  spread    out    to  greet  them, 
Tall  the  pines  'mid  winds  that  beat  them, 

Shone  like  Cambrian  towers. 
Whirled  the  ospreys  there  in  wonder. 
O'er  the  old  rocks  rent  asunder 

In  the  wiers  of  flowers. 

Chorus — Men  of  Swansea  glorious,  etc. 

III. 
Hail,  John  Myles,  each  roof  tree  turning 
Into  cabined  schools  of  learning, 
In  each  falling  grove  discerning 

Freedom's  wider  light ! 
Men  who  read  Semitic  story, 
Men  who  changed  their  dreams  to  glory. 
Sang  as  once  the  Welsh  bards  hoary, 

Treedom,  God  and  Right !' 

Chorus — Men  of  Swansea  glorious,  etc. 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  95 

IV.   . 

'Mid  their  axes  boldly  swinging, 
Wars  of  Hallelujahs  singing, 
To  Llewellyn's  legends  clinging 

In  their  strength  bedight. 
Men  who  gave  to  men  their  birthright, 
Men  who  gave  to  toil  its  earthright, 
Men  who  honored  men  for  worth-right, 

Men  in  virtue  white. 

* 
Chorus — Men  of  Swansea  glorious,  etc. 

V. 

Sing  with  them,  your  new  hopes  sounding, 
March  with  them,  a  new  age  founding, 
With  their  motto  still  resounding. 

Lead  in  Freedom's  van. 
Theirs  the  folk-note,  theirs  in  station. 
First  in  counsels  of  the  nation. 
Pioneers  of  education. 

For  the  rights  of  man. 

Chorus — Men  of  Swansea  glorious,  etc." 


DEDICATORY  ADDRESS. 

BY  REV.  W.  H.  EATON,  D.  D. 

"In  this  quiet  place,  above  the  ashes  of  the 
long-time  dead,  we  have  come  to  assign  this 
stone  to  the  reverent  task  of  reminding  the 
passerby  of  John  Myles,  and  of  his  vigorous, 
manysided  and  eventful  life.  May  it  also  serve 
as  a  reminder  of  the  obligations  which  an  il- 
lustrious ancestry  impose  upon  their  descend- 
ants, even  to  remote  generations. 

With  all  the  aids  which  biography  and  his- 
tory can  furnish,  our  conception  of  the  times 
in  which  he  lived,  and  the  conditions  under 
which  he  died  are  very  imperfect,  but  we  know 
enough  of  the  man  and  his  work  to  appreciate 
in  a  measure  the  towering  grandeur  of  his 
character  and  the  widespread  and  abounding 
influence  which  emanated  from  his  life. 

Whether  we  look  upon  him  as  the  student  in 
college,  the  young  convert,  pastor-evangelist 
with  missionary  zeal  a  century  in  advance  o£ 
his  generation,  the  cherished  servant  of  Crom- 
well, who  saw  in  him  the  discriminating  quali- 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  97 

ties  fitting  him  for  a  most  delicate  and  difficult 
task,  the  exile  for  conscience's  sake,  the  pio- 
neer citizen,  the  sturdy  champion  of  that  re- 
ligious liberty  which  has  become  a  birthright, 
a  founder  of  first  Baptist  churches  on  two  con- 
tinents, a  pedagogue  who,  in  rude  cabins, 
taught  little  children  to  read,  a  Nestor  among 
preachers,  the  man  who  dared  to  go  to  Boston 
in  later  years  and  preach  the  Gospel  as  he  un- 
derstood it  to  the  persecuted  First  Baptist 
church,  a  counsellor  of  the  Baptists  of  New- 
port and  Providence,  an  unmitred  bishop,  the 
fullness,  variety  and  intensity  of  his  life  com- 
pel our  admiration. 

As  we  gather  today  with  uncovered  heads 
and  reverent  tread  about  the  spot  where  erst 
they  laid  him  for  his  last  long  sleep,  with  pur- 
pose that  his  shall  be  no  longer  an  unmarked 
grave,  there  comes  to  us  all  a  conception  of 
the  setting  of  a  true  man  in  history,  and  of 
what  lofty  purpose  and  loyalty  to  the  truth, 
and  godlike  compassion  constrain  men  to  be 
and  to  do,  so  may  this  stone,  with  its  simple 
tablet,  and  the  revival  of  memories  which  it 
brings,  serve  also  as  an  incentive  to  us  and  to 


98  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

all  who  may  behold  it,  to  the  living  of  such 
manner  of  life  in  its  entirety  of  service  and  if 
need  be,  sublimity  of  sacrifice,  as  will  secure 
the  admiration  of  men  and  the  approval  of 
heaven ! 

In  the  name  of  Massachusetts,  State  of  the 
Puritan  and  the  Pilgrim,  the  veritable  battle- 
ground of  religious  liberty,  queen  of  Ameri- 
can Commonwealths ;  in  the  name  of  the  Bap- 
tist churches  of  Massachusetts,  the  first  of 
which  he  founded;  in  the  name  of  old  Swan- 
sea, named  from  his  loved  home  in  Wales ;  in 
the  name  of  the  denomination  grown  so  many 
and  widespread  in  the  land  that  its  stately 
march  is  the  tramp  of  five  millions;  in  the 
name  of  the  Church  Universal,  whose  freedom 
from  statecraft  he  did  so  much  to  win,  I  dedi- 
cate this  rugged,  massive  stone  to  the  perpet- 
uation, if  it  may  be,  to  the  end  of  time,  of  the 
memory  of  John  Myles." 


APPENDIX  K. 

Bibliography. 

Allen,  William,  "American  Biographical  and 
Historical  Dictionary." 

Adams,  Brooks,  "The  Emancipation  of 
Massachusetts." 

Armitage,  Thomas,  "A  History  of  the  Bap- 
tists." 

Arnold,  Samuel  G.,  "History  of  the  State  of 
Rhode  Island." 

Asplund,  John,  "Annual  Register  of  the  Bap- 
tist Denomination  in  North  America,"  1790. 

Backus,  Isaac,  "History  of  the  Baptists," 

Barrows,  C.  E.,  "Historical  Sketch  of  the  First 
Baptist  Church,  Newport." 

Barry,  J.  S.,  "History  of  Massachusetts,"  Vol. 
I. 

Baylies,  Francis,  "History  of  New  Plymouth." 

Benedict,  David,  "A  General  History  of  the 
Baptist  Denomination." 

Bicknell,  Thomas  W.,  "John  Myles  and  Re- 
ligious Toleration  in  Massachusetts." 

Bliss,  Leonard,  Jr.,  "History  of  Rehoboth." 


100  REV.  JOHN  MYLES. 

Burrage,  Henry  S.,  ''History  of  the  Baptists 

in  Maine." 
Burrage,  Henry  S.,  ''History  of  the  Baptists 

in  New  England." 
Cathcart,    William,    "The     Baptist    Encyclo- 
paedia." 
Cobb,  Sanford  H.,    "The    Rise    of  Religious 

Liberty  in  America." 
"Collections  of   the    Massachusetts  Historical 

Society,"  4th  Series,  Vol.  H. 
"Diary  of  John  Comer." 
Felt,    Joseph    B.,    "Ecclesiastical   History   of 

New  England." 
Ford,  David  B.,    "New    England's  Struggles 

for  Religious  Liberty." 
Goodwin,  John  A.,  "The  Pilgrim  Republic." 
Green,    Albert,    "Historical    Address    at    the 

1 00th  Anniversaary  of  the  Founding  of  the 

First  Baptist  Church    in    East  Providence, 

Including  Baptist  History  in  Ancient  Reho- 

both." 
"Historical  Sketches  of  Barrington,"  edited  by 

Thos.  W.  Bicknell. 
"Historical  Sketch  of  Baptist  Beginnings  in 

Berkshire,  Mass.,"  by  Rev.  W.  H.  Eaton, 

D.  D. 


REV.   JOHN   MYLES.  lOI 

Hoar,  George  F.,  "Oration  Delivered  at  Ply- 
mouth at  the  275th  Anniversary  of  the  Land- 
ing of  the  Pilgrims,  Dec.  21,  1895." 

Keen,  William  W.,  "The  Bicentennial  of  the 
Founding  of  the  First  Baptist  Church  in 
Philadelphia." 

King,  Henry  M.,  "A  Summer  Visit  of  Three 
Rhode  Islanders  to  the  Massachusetts  Bay 
in  165 1." 

King,  Henry  M.,  "Religious  Liberty,  an  His- 
torical Paper." 

King,  Henry  M.,  "The  Baptism  of  Roger  Wil- 
liams." 

King,  Henry  M.,  "The  Mother  Church." 

Knowles,  James  D.,  "Memoir  of  Roger  Wil- 
liams." 

"Massachusetts  Baptist  Missionary  Maga- 
zine," Old  Series,  Vol.  L 

"New  England  Magazine,"  New  Series,  Vol. 
XVn,  p.  342,  Article  by  William  A.  Slater, 
"Two  Champions  of  Religious  Liberty  in 
New  England,  Obadiah  Holmes  and  John 
Myles." 

"New  Hampshire  Provincial  Papers." 


102  REV.    JOHN    MYLES. 

Newman,  Albert  H.,  "A  Century  of  Baptist 
Achievement." 

Newman,  Albert  H.,  "American  Church  His- 
tory," Vol.  II,  "The  Baptists." 

Oliver,  Peter,  "The  Puritan  Commonwealth, 
an  Historical  Review  of  the  Puritan  Gk)v- 
emment  in  Massachusetts  in  its  Civil  and 
Ecclesiastical  Relations  from  its  Rise  to  the 
Abrogation  of  the  First  Charter." 

Osgood,  Herbert  L.,  "The  American  Colonies 
in  the  Seventeenth  Century." 

"Plymouth  Colony  Records,"  Vol.  IV. 

Quint,  A.  H.,  "Memorial  Address  at  the  250th 
Anniversary  of  the  First  Parish  in  Dover, 
N.  H." 

"Rhode  Island  Historical  Collections,"  Vol. 
VI. 

Sprague,  W.  B.,  "Annals  of  the  American 
Baptist  Pulpit." 

St.  John,  Wallace,  "The  Contest  for  Liberty 
of  Conscience  in  England." 

"State  of  Rhode  Island  and  Providence  Plan- 
tations at  the  End  of  the  Century;  a  His- 
tory," edited  by  Edward  Field. 


REV.  JOHN  MYLES.  IO3 

Thatcher,  J.  J.,  "Historical  Sketch  of  the  First 
Baptist  Church,  Swansea,  Mass." 

Tustin,  Josiah  P.,  "Dedication  Discourse,  De- 
livered in  Warren,  R.  I.,  1845." 

Waters,  Henry  F.,  Ancestry  of  Roger  Williams 
in  England.  In  N.  E.  Historical  and  Gene- 
alogical Register,  Vol.  43,  pp.  294-303. 

Winthrop,  John,  "History  of  New  England." 

Wood,  Nathan  E.,  "History  of  the  First  Bap- 
tist Church  in  Boston." 


INDEX. 

Act  of  Uniformity,  7,  9. 

Adams,  Brooks,  44. 

Alby,  Benjamin,  26,  55,  (£,  68. 

Alden,  John,  30. 

Aldrich,  George,  66. 

Allen,  Gideon,  66. 

Allen,  John,  36,  45,  57,  65,  70. 

Allen,  Nehemiah,  66. 

Asplund,  Rev.  John,  82. 

Attempted  Church  in  Weymouth,  *jy. 

Backus'  History,  38,  47,  81. 

Baptists,  Characteristic  Principle,  5,  39,  40. 

Barnes,  Thomas,  66. 

Bartram,  William,  (^. 

Bellingham  Church,  81. 

Bellingham,  Governor,  22. 

Benedict,  David,  21. 

Bicknell,  Thomas  W.,  48,  70,  85. 

BHss,  Leonard,  Jr.,  81. 

Boston  First  Church,  44.  ! 

Bosworth,  Jonathan,  (£.  ' 


I06  INDEX. 

Bowen,  Jabez,  28. 
Bowen,  Obadiah,  28,  66. 
Brace,  Stephen,  66. 
Bradford,  William,  30. 
Brooks,  Timothy,  66. 
Browne,  James,  26,  30,  55,  57,  66,  68,  70. 
Browne,  John,  26,  45,  66. 
Brownes,  John  and  Samuel,  17. 
Brown  University,  14,  28. 
Burges,  Richard,  (>6. 
Bur  rage.  Rev.  Henry  S.,  27. 
Butterworth,  Hezekiah,  93. 
Butterworth,  John,  25,  26,  36,  38,  55,  57,  63,  66, 
68,  70. 

Cahoone,  William,  (^6. 

Carpenter,  Joseph,  26,  55,  (^^  68. 

Charles  I.,  i,  4,  12. 

Charles  II.,  4,  6,  8,  13,  19. 

Cheshire,  Mass.,  38. 

Child,  Jeremiah,  66. 

Clarke,  John,  18,  20,  21,  29,  40,  49. 

Cole,  Hugh,  (£. 

Cole,  John,  66. 

Comer,  Rev.  John,  81. 


INDEX.  107 


Consett,  William,  11. 
Conventicle  Act,  7. 
Corporation  Act,  7. 
Covenant  of  Swansea  Church,  52. 
Crandall,  John,  18,  21. 
Cromwell,  i,  2. 

Davis,  John  W.,  ^7. 
Dickse,  John,  (£. 
Division  of  Inhabitants,  (fj. 
Draper,  Edward,  ii. 
Dunster,  Henry,  44. 

Easterbrooks,  Thomas,  46,  (£. 

East  Providence  Church,  81, 

Eaton,  Isaac,  14. 

Eaton,  Rev.  W.  H.,  35,  96. 

Eddy,  Caleb,  66. 

Eddy,  Zachariah,  (^. 

Edwards,  Morgan,  14,  15. 

Elliot,  John,  36. 

Elliot,  Thomas,  66. 

Evans,  Christmas,  14. 

Field,  Edward,  17. 


I08  INDEX. 

First  Bapt.  Church  in  Wales,  ii,  13,  15. 
Five  Mile  Act,  8. 

Goodwin,  John  A.,  17,  31. 
Goold,  Thomas,  44,  45. 
Griffith,  Thomas,  14. 

Harrington,  Rev.  Benjamin,  83. 
Harvard  University,  44,  72. 
Haywood,  William,  (^. 
Hazel,  John,  24. 
Hoar,  George  F.,  39. 
Hollis,  Thomas,  44,  72. 
Holmes,  Obadiah,  18,  20,  21,  24. 
Hopkins,  Stephen,  28. 

Ilston,  Wales,  11. 
Ingraham,  Gerard,  ^. 
Ingraham,  William,  (^. 

Jones,  David,  14. 
Jones,  Jenkin,  15. 
Jones,  Robert,  66. 
Jones,  Samuel,  14,  15. 

Keen,  William  W.,  15. 


INDEX.  109 


Kelley's  Bridge,  35. 

Kent,  Joseph,  66. 

Kingsley,  Eldad,  26,  55,  ^y  68. 

Kittery  Church,  27. 

Knollys,  Hanserd,  47,  ^^, 

Lewis,  Joseph,  (^. 

Lewis,  Nathaniel,  66. 

Lewis,  Thomas,  66. 

Lucar,  Mark,  20. 

Luther,  Hezekiah,  66. 

Luther,  Martin,  3. 

Luther,  Rev.  Samuel,  66,  72,  82,  86. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  8. 
Mann,  James,  24. 
Manning,  Thomas,  (:6. 
Martin,  John,  (£. 
Mason,  Sampson,  (>6, 
Massachusetts  Bay,  17. 
Mather,  Cotton,  30,  44,  47. 
Maxwell,  Rev.  Samuel,  83. 
Melanchthon,  3. 
Miles,  Nelson  A.,  49. 
Morgan,  Abel,  14,  15. 


no  INDEX. 

Morgan,  Evan,  14,  15, 

Myles,  Rev.  John,  9,  10,  12,  13,  14,  15,  19,  26, 

30,  32,  38,  39»  40,  41,  42,  43,  45,  46,  49,  55, 

63,  65,  68,  85,  89. 
Myles,  John,  Jr.,  49,  66. 
Myles,  Rev.  Samuel,  49. 

Newman,  A.  H.,  38. 
Newman,  Rev.  Samuel,  20,  30. 
Newport  First  Church,  29. 
Newport  Second  Church,  29. 

Oak  Swamps  Church,  81. 
Oliver,  Peter,  9. 
Olney,  Thomas,  29. 
Olney,  Thomas,  Jr.,  29. 
Oswego  Church,  81. 

Paddock,  John,  66. 

Paine,  Nathaniel,  36,  57,  66. 

Perry,  Edgar  D.,  17. 

Peters,  Rev.  Hugh,  34. 

Pilgrims,  22,  24. 

Plymouth  Colony,  17,  19,  21,  24,  30.  •    - 

Powell,  Vavasor,  14. 


INDEX.  Ill 

Presbyterians,  5. 
Prince,  Thomas,  30. 
Proud,  Thomas,  11. 
Providence  First  Church,  28. 
Providence  Second  Church,  29. 
Puritans,  3,  17,  22,  24. 

Quint,  A.  H.,  80. 

Rhys,  David  Thomas,  14. 

Saltonstall,  Richard,  19. 
Savoy  Conference,  6. 
Screven,  Rev.  WilUam,  27. 
Seekonk,  23. 
Sharp,  Richard,  66. 
Smith,  Edward,  24. 
State  Boundary  Line,  17. 
St.  John,  Wallace,  2. 
Swansea  Church,  Baptist,  85. 
Symmes,  Rev.  Zachariah,  32. 

Tanner,  Nicholas,  26,  28,  31,  32,  36,  55,  (^,  68. 
Thomas,  David,  14. 
Thomas,  John,  28. 
Thurber,  John,  66. 


112  INDEX. 

Tcx>good,  Nathaniel,  (^. 
Tory,  Joseph,  24. 
Town  of  Swansea,  33,  56. 
Tyler's  Point,  48,  85. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  7. 

Wannamoisett,  33,  56. 

Warren  Church,  81. 

Waters,  Henry  F.,  14. 

West,  John,  66. 

Wheaton,  Rev.  Ephraim,  72,  83. 

Wheaton,  Henry,  84. 

Wheaton,  Joseph,  66. 

Wheaton,  Levi  P.,  84. 

Wheaton,  Robert,  83. 

Wheaton,  Samuel,  66. 

Willett,  Thomas,  36,  37,  38,  57,  58,  65. 

Williams,  John,  14. 

Williams,  Roger,  7,  14,  18,  28,  40,  49,  79. 

Wilson,  Rev.  James,  89. 

Winslow,  Job,  66, 

Wood,  Rev.  Jabez,  83. 

Wood,  Rev.  Nathan  E.,  27. 

Woodbury,  Samuel,  66. 

Zwingli,  3. 


A  Stimmer  Visit  of  Three  Rhode  Islanders 
to  the  Massachusetts  Bay  m  I65t 


By  henry  MEI.VII.I.E  KING 
Pastor  of  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Providence,  R.  I. 


Cloth,  12  mo.,  115  pages.     Price,  $1.00  net. 

Uniform  with  ••  John  Myles.' 


An  account  of  the  visit  of  Dr.  John  Clarke, 
Obadiah  Holmes  and  John  Crandall,  members 
OF  the  Baptist  Church  in  Newport,  R.  I.,  to 
William  Witter  of  Swampscott,  Mass.  ,  in  July, 
1651:  its  innocent  purpose  and  its  painful  con- 
sequences. 

"Dr.  King's  pungent  and  conclusive  essay  is  a 
timely  contribution.  He  adduces  competent  evi- 
dence refuting  the  gratuitous  insinuations  of  Palfrey 
and  Dexter,  who  charged  the  Rhode  Islanders  in 
question  with  sinister  political  motives  and  excused 
their  alleged  maltreatment  on  that  ground.  Cita- 
tions from  original  documents,  with  a  bibliography, 
put  the  reader  in  position  to  verify  the  allegations  of 
the  author."  —  TAe   Watchman. 

"The  late  Dr.  Dexter,  along  with  other  Puritan 
apologists,  is  again  successfully  refuted ;  at  the  same 
time  recently  discovered  evidence  of  Roger  Wil- 
liams' having  been  banished  on  account  of  *  his  dif- 
ferent opinions  in  matters  of  religion,'  is  advanced 
out  of  the  mouths  of  his  half-relenting  persecutors." 
—  The  Evening  Post. 


Sent  postpaid  upon   receipt  of  the  price  by  the 
publishers. 

PRESTON  &  ROUNDS  CO. 

Providence,  R.  I. 


The  Baptism  of  Roger  Williams 

A  Review 
OF  Rev.  Dr.  W.   H.  Whitsitt's   Inference 


By  henry  MKlvVILLE  KING 
Pastor  of  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Providence,  R.  I. 


With  an  Introduction  by  Rev.  Jesse  B.  Thomas,  D.D. 

Professor  of  Church  History  in  the  Newton 

Theological  Institution 


"  We  have  to  thank  Dr.  King  for  giving  us  so  care- 
ful and  so  convincing  a  statement  of  the  grounds  for 
the  traditional  belief.  It  could,  indeed,  make  no  dif- 
ference with  our  duty  as  Baptists  if  Roger  Williams 
had  not  been  immersed ;  but  we  are  glad  to  be  reas- 
sured, by  one  so  competent  to  present  the  facts  in 
the  case,  that  we  may  still  claim  our  great  Baptist 
pioneer  as  an  immersed  follower  of  the  Lord." —  The 
Examtner. 

"The  argument  of  the  book  is  decisive,  in  our 
opinion,  and  the  book  is  a  valuable  contribution  to 
Baptist  historical  literature.''— 7)^^  Western  Re- 
corder, 


Cloth,  12  mo.,  145  pages.     Price,  $1.00  net. 

Uniform  with  "John  Myles." 


Sent  postpaid  upon  receipt  of  the  price. 

PRESTON  &  ROUNDS  CO. 

Providence,  R.  I. 


Religious  Liberty 


An  Historical  Paper 


By  henry  MEI.VII.I.E  KING 
Pastor  of  the  First  Baptist  Church  in  Providence,  R.  I. 


••  This  is  one  of  those  highly  satisfactory  papers  in 
small  compass  that  we  sometimes  come  across  that 
sheds  a  clearer  and  more  comprehensive  light  upon  a 
large  subject  than  many  a  thicker  volume,  or  series  of 
volumes,  is  capable  of  doing.  *  *  *  The  scholarly 
fervor  of  the  Puritan  pen  is  easily  observable  in  these 
clear  and  simple  tracings  of  the  direct  path  of  descent 
of  one  of  the  noblest  principles  of  American  civiliza- 
tion. *  *  *  The  subject  certainly  has  an  able  and 
pleasing  expositor.'*  —  Boston  Transcript. 

"The  book  is  one  that  will  command  attention  from 
all  thinking  people,  and  its  value  as  a  history  of  the 
development  of  religious  liberty  is  great." — Provi- 
dence Telegram. 


Cloth,  12  mo.,  132  pages.     Price,  $1.00  net. 

Uniform  with  "John  Myles." 


Sent  postpaid  upon  receipt  of  the  price. 

PRESTON  &  ROUNDS  CO. 

Providence,  R.  I. 


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LD  21-100m-12,'43  (8796s) 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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